GIFT  OF 


umbug  -  Land 


BEING  THE    REPORT  OF 

MENDEZ  PINTO 


Concerning  a  Man-like  Creature 
Inhabiting  the  Earth  during  the  Seventeenth    Eon 


Submitted  to  the  Regents  of  the 
UNIVERSITY  OF  ALDEBARAN 
Constellatio  Taurii.  MCMXVI 


Weimar  Press,  ( Route  8,  Box  45  )  Los  Angeles,  Cal, 
Price  50c,  postpaid,  coin  or  exchange. 


I.    PROEM* 


Out  of  Tune  in  Nature. 

II.    THE  MENTAL  STRUCTURE  OF  THE  HUMAN  CREATURE 2 

Not  yet  Dry  behind  the  Ears. 

III.  His  BRAIN-BOX 3 

The  Suckling  of  Cow-Milk  and  Barley-Water. 

IV.  HUMAN  CONSCIENCE  AND  MORALITY 6 

Who  is  Right?    Nature's  God  or  Man's  Conscience? 

V.    HUMAN  CRUELTY  TO  THEIR  YOUNG 8 

"Spare  not  the  Rod." 

VI.    EDUCATION  BY  TORTURE 8 

The  Dull  Boy  and  Squirrel-Lore 

VII.    THE  HUMAN  SOCIAL  STRUCTURE 9 

Under  the  Hangman's  Banner. 

VIII.    HUMAN  CHARACTERISTICS 12 

Riding  upon  his  Brother's  Back. 

IX.    MAN'S  WORST  ENEMY  Is  MAN 13 

Fencing  in  the  North-Pole. 

X.    LOYALTY  TO  DELUSIONS 15 

Looking  for  Work  in  Heaven. 

XI.    DISCORDANT  SOCIAL  INSTINCTS 17 

Is  Man  a  Mosquito,  Bee,  Ant,  Bird,  or  Beaver? 

XII.    MAN'S  CRUELTY  TO  His  FEMALE 20 

The  Spittoon-Cleaner. 

XIII.  HUMAN  BLOODTHIRSTINESS  (THE  WHITE  PLAGUE) 21 

From  Paradise  to  Packinghouse. 

XIV.  HUMAN  TRICKERY  AND  DECEITFULNESS 22 

The  Humane  Society  and  the  Judas-Kiss. 

XV.    THE  CULT  OF  TORTURE 23 

"Lex  Taliones"  and  the  CHRISTIAN  HATE. 

XVI.     PROGRESSIVE  DEGENERATION 24 

From  Head-Hunter  to  Bayonet  Drill. 

SXVII.    PARASITISM 26 

Feasting  the  Drones. 

XVIII.    MEN  AT  PLAY 27 

What  does  the  Mirror  Tell? 

XIX.    DEBTS   27 

What  Moth  and  Rust  Cannot  Corrupt. 

XX.    THE  INTELLECTUALS 28 

Standing  in  Line  for  a  Yoke. 

XIX.    THE  GOSPEL  OF  TOIL 30 

Canary-Song  vs.  the  Boiler  Factory. 

XXII.  NEMESIS  34 

The  Police-Judge  and  the  Supreme  Court  of  Nature. 

XXIII.  THE  ECONOMY  OF  MORTAL  LIFE 35 

Immortals  that  Seek  to  Become  Mortal. 


HUMBUG-LAND 

BY  MENDEZ  PINTO. 

I.     PROEM 

Out  of  Tune  in  Nature. 

All  the  beasts  of  prey  which  at  present  inhabit  the  earth,  are 
divided  into  four  tribes:  black,  yellow,  brown  and  white.  Of  these 
the  white  are  the  most  numerous  as  well  as  the  most  destructive 
and  ferocious. 

Belonging  to  the  living  creation,  even  these  perverted  creatures 
have  something  in  common  with  ourselves,  the  Immortals,  for  they 
possess  many  faculties,  both  of  mind  and  body,  which  may  be 
regarded  as  of  the  same  order  of  nature,  only  less  perfect  and 
refined.  They  exhibit  some  capacity  to  feel,  for  on  occasion  they 
seem  to  act  elated  or  depressed.  Also,  they  have  some  gift  of 
reason,  but  their  conclusions  and  inferences  are  either  queer  or 
false. 

No  doubt  our  learned  investigators  are  right  that  this  plague 
v  of  the  earth  is  one  of  the  latest  products  of  animal  evolution,  for 
no  other  class  of  creatures  would  appear  so  imperfect,  so  self- 
contradictory,  so  unresponsive  to  instinct,  so  helpless,  so  deceitful, 
so  cunning,  so  depraved,  so  senseless,  so  brutal,  so  bloodthirsty,  so 
implacable  an  enemy  of  all  that  lives  and  grows,  as  these  cox  comb 
creatures  who  call  themselves  human  beings.  It  looks  as  if  their 
creation  is  the  worst  mistake  which  has  happened  to  our  mother 
nature,  but  as  with  all  other  evil  things,  so  man  also  bears  within 
himself  the  seeds  of  his  ultimate  destruction,  and  in  that  fair  day 
when  there  shall  no  longer  be  any  blot  upon  the  face  of  the  earth 
or  sky,  the  memory  of  man  will  linger  only  in  our  museums  as  an 
extinct  monster  of  cruelty  which  had  but  a  momentary  existence  in 
the  progress  of  evolution. 

But  while  man  remains,  he  is  a  great  plague  to  all  living  things, 
both  to  plants  and  animals,  and  were  it  not  for  our  own  ethereal 
bodies,  we  Immortals  also  would  suffer  from  his  depradations. 
Therefore,  I  was  appointed  by  our  honorable  six  hundred  and 
thirty-second  assembly  to  make  a  complete  study  of  this  creature's 
habits  and  life-history  in  order  to  see  if  we  shall  continue  in  our 
practice  to  let  all  living  things  persue  unhindered  the  course  of  their 
existence,  be  it  good  or  evil,  or  whether  this  plague,  which  in  the 

. 


...  Pinto 

last  moons  seems  to  increase  so  inordinately,  should  be  hastened  to 
its  destruction  by  our  acts  of  higher  wisdom. 

I  have  therefore  faithfully  performed  my  task,  according  to  the 
confidence  of  our  associates  in  me  and  submit  herewith  the  follow- 
ing report: 

II.    THE  MENTAL  STRUCTURE  OF  THE  HUMAN 
CREATURE 

Not  yet  Dry  behind  the  Ears. 

The  mental  constitution  of  mankind  is  related  to  that  of  other 
animals,  but  is  of  a  more  unstable  and  deleterious  nature.     Man's 
instincts  are  still  uncorrelated,  for  the  time  of  his  existence,  com- 
pared with  other  creatures,  is  very  short.     He  has  not  yet  gained 
any  real  evolutionary  experience,  therefore  his  soul  and  mind  still 
grope  in  the  dark  and  are  the  prey  of  every  illusion  and  delusion 
that  thought  and  emotion  are  capable  of.     He  cannot  distinguish 
between  truth  and  falsehood,  for  his  sense-perception  is  both  limited 
and  deceptive,  attuned  to  but  a  few  octaves  of  sound  and  light.    The 
v    eye  of  one  man  sees  a  thing  red  and  the  eye  of  another  man  sees 
Xthe  same  thing  green.    Likewise,  it  is  with  his  emotions.    The  same 
\sentiment  will  stir  one  man  into  fury  and  leave  another  cold  and 
apathetic,  which  is  a  fruitful  cause  of  his  never-ending  and  stupid 
quarrels. 

Furthermore,  man's  sense  of  smell  is  nearly  atroohied,  and  his 
taste  is  perverted.  So  he  is  blind  and  deaf  to  all  the  great  har- 
monies of  the  universe,  which  every  moment  surge  through  our 
being,  for  we  Ethereals  are  attuned  to  the  entire  range  of  nature's 
music.  Our  bodies  are  all  eye,  all  ear,  for  we  are  made  of  light 
and  the  luminiferous  ether  is  the  essense  of  our  being.  There 
is  nothing  far  nor  near,  nothing  high  nor  low,  nothing  past  nor 
future,  which  does  not  register  itself  in  our  sensitiveness.  For 
each  of  us  is  part  of  the  All  that  is  and  ever  shall  be  and  the  course 
of  our  being  has  run  from  immortality  to  that  which  is  mortal,  we 
fall  and  we  rise,  we  disappear  and  appear  again  and  ecstacy  is  the 
end  of  our  being. 

Not  so  is  man.  He  conceives  that  he  was  born  to  plague  him- 
self with  labor  and  weariness,  and  that  the  end  of  his  being  Is 
sorrow  and  weeping  and  that  he  was  created  for  toil  and  tribula- 
tion. Therefore,  he  has  so  formed  his  social  structure  that  the 
many  are  slaves  and  the  few  are  rulers  and  his  virtues  are  obedience 
and  the  carrying  of  burdens  for  others.  His  morality  is  like  unto 
that  of  dogs,  who  fawn  upon  the  hand  that  beats  them  and  whose 
greatest  happiness  is  their  master's  commendation.  Their  ambition 
is  to  be  good  and  faithful  servants,  who  toil  all  day  for  their  lord 
and  then  wait  upon  him  at  table,  glad  to  subsist  upon  the  crumbs  he 
drops  to  the  floor.  For  us  Immortals,  in  whom  the  love  of  liberty 
is  so  strong  that  we  would  perish  sooner  than  perform  a  day's  slave- 
toil  at  the  command  of  another,  and  who  render  obedience  to  none, 


Humbug-Land  3 

save  to  truth  and  wisodm,  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  of  the  existence 
of  so  slavish  a  race  as  is  mankind,  for  there  does  not  seem  to  be  a 
single  human  being  but  what  he  feels  himself  beholden  to  some 
authority  over  him,  yet  all  animals,  outside  of  the  dog-tribes,  are 
endowed  with  self -direction  and  repudiate  every  authority  over 
themselves  save  the  urge  of  their  own  being,  for  liberty  is  among 
the  pristine  gifts  of  life,  but  man  was  asleep  when  the  goddess  of 
freedom  passed  by,  and  she  departed  in  a  dudgeon  from  the  human 
race  because  she  was  not  wooed  intently  enough. 

III.    HIS  BRAIN-BOX 
The  Suckling  of  Cow-Milk  and  Barley-Water. 

When  we  put  a  human  specimen  upon  the  dissecting  table  the 
first  thing  peculiar  which  strikes  us  and  which  mismatches  man 
from  other  animals,  is  his  big  head  and  overgrowth  of  brain.  At 
any  rate,  something  is  wrong  in  this  brain-box,  for  it  seems  to  inter- 
fere continuously  with  the  normal  instincts  which  man  has  inherited 
from  the  nobler  animals  which  were  his  forbears.  So  he  does  not 
drink  water,  which  supports  the  life-processes  of  hia  organism,  but 
he  drinks  alcohol  to  wreck  his  body;  he  stews  himself  in  opium  and 
tobacco  juice  and  drugs  himself  out  of  the  little  sense  he  naturally 
might  have  had.  It  i§  this  brain  of  his  which  makes  him  do  all 
the  unnatural  things  of  which  he  is  guilty,  which  perverts  every 
truth  of  nature  and  makes  him  the  subject  of  delusions  and  hysterias 
and  causes  wars  among  them  in  which  they  blindly  rush  at  each 
other  to  destroy  themselves.  Nowhere  in  nature  have  ever  appeared 
such  evils  as  the  human  brain  has  invented :  murder,  war,  tyranny, 
prison-houses,  tortures  and  other  crazes  and  manias  unnumbered. 

Physically,  man  is  soon  becoming  the  wreck  he  is  striving  so 
hard  to  make  of  himself.  His  body  is  bony  and  crooked  and  shot 
through  with  disease.  He  can  no  longer  grow  his  own  teeth,  they 
are  made  in  a  factory,  and  their  women's  breasts  are  dried  up  so 
that  they  must  feed  their  infants  on  cow-milk  and  barley-water. 
Yet  it  is  especially  those  whom  they  count  great  among  themselves 
which  are  the  most  degenerated  and  helpless.  These  great  ones 
cannot  put  sugar  into  their  own  coffee,  but  must  have  butlers  stand- 
ing behind  their  chairs  while  they  eat,  to  wait  upon  them.  Their 
princesses  cannot  hook  their  own  gowns,  or  keep  clean  their  finger- 
nails, or  wash  their  own  hair.  More  than  one-half  the  members  of 
the  white  race  does  not  know  how  to  grow  its  own  wheat,  or  vege- 
tables, or  fruit,  so  they  eat  embalmed  beef  out  of  tin  cans  and  sip 
soda-water  colored  with  coal-tar  dyes.  Yet  man  is  as  pro\id  of  his 
swell-head  as  a  gobbler  is  of  his  wattles.  He  regards  it  almost  as 
the  jewel  of  creation,  the  seat  of  his  intelligence  and  reason.  But 
our  scientists  set  no  great  store  by  either  reason  or  intelligence  or 
brain-storms,  for  in  all  the  wonderful  achievements  of  the  living 
evolution,  the  human  brain  has  had  little  or  no  part.  It  is  not  the 
seat  of  instincts,  which  alone  can  be  transmitted  from  parents  to  off- 
spring, and  instinct,  not  reason  or  intelligence,  is  the  foundation- 


4  Mendez  Pinto 

stone  of  life.  In  man,  the  brain  is  the  organ  of  self-consciousness 
and  conceit,  aside  from  its  physiological  function  of  being  the  cen- 
tral station  of  the  sensori-motor-reflex. 

Man  is  very  proud  that  he  can  read  and  write  by  means  of  this 
wonderful  brain  of  his,  so  that  when  a  road  is  properly  sign-posted 
he  can  find  his  way  home.  But  a  bird  can  travel  a  thousand  miles 
without  a  compass  and  a  dog  can  smell  his  way  home,  and  can  scent 
the  track  of  man  and  animals  without  having  to  look  it  up  in  the 
encyclopedia.  Man  greatly  values  the  store  of  knowledge  which 
he  has  piled  up  in  the  books  of  his  libraries,  but  three-fourths  of 
these  tomes  of  wisdom  are  filled  with  arguments  of  his  duty  to 
obey  the  decrees  of  his  masters  and  respect  the  authority  of  those 
'  set  over  him  and  to  be  content  with  his  crust.  We  Immortals  set 
no  store  by  such  things,  for  we  continually  seek  to  widen  the  realm 
of  freedom  and  to  add  to  the  intensity  and  excitement  of  life.  We 
consider  it  worth  while  to  scale  the  dizzy  heights  in  order  to  see  new 
horizons,  to  climb  the  mountain  peak  for  the  exhilaration  of  tobog- 
ganning  down  its  side  with  the  speed  of  lightning.  Everywhere 
the  living  world  is  playing  with  nature's  forces  to  contrive  a  wilder 
ride  through  space. 

As  for  the  rest  of  man's  cold-stored  knowledge  I  have  found 
nothing  in  his  books  which  the  flowers  and  trees,  the  birds  or  the 
insects,  did  not  know  a  thousand  years  before  his  time.  Man  thinks 
his  microscope  and  telescope,  his  X-ray  and  his  flying-machine 
achievements  worthy  of  the  gods.  He  admires  his  diamond  dyes 
and  claims  to  have  harnessed  the  forces  of  nature  in  steam  and  elec- 
trical engines.  But  how  insignificant  are  all  these  things  when 
compared  with  the  achievements  of  the  instincts  of  animals  and 
plants?  Human  intelligence  can  build  a  microscope,  but  instinct  is 
'  able  to  evolve  the  eye  itself ;  man  can  make  an  organ,  but  instinct 
-'  produces  the  ear.  Instinct  invented  the  flight  of  birds  millions  of 
years  before  man  invented  a"n  aeroplane,  and  the  electric  fish,  by 
instinct,  grows  an  infinitely  more  effective  battery  than  man  pro- 
duces. The  instinct  of  plants  can  distil  the  most  beautiful  colors 
out  of  the  brown  earth.  The  lowliest  green  algae,  yea,  every  blade 
of  grass,  or  green  leaf,  can  use  the  most  available  natural  energy, 
viz.,  the  light  of  the  sun,  in  the  chemical  factory  of  its  organism. 
Every  green  thing  in  nature  is  a  wonderful  factory  run  by  sun- 
motors,  clean  and  bright,  but  man  can  only  make  smoke. 

Man's  knowledge,  and  the  achievement  of  his  reason,  play  no 
,part  in  the  larger  life  of  the  cosmos,  for  they  cannot  be  transmitted 
from  parent  to  off-spring.    Reason  is  merely  a  by-product  of  evolu- 
tion, of  value  only  as  a  satisfaction  of  the  wonder-instinct. 

Man  considers  himself  infinitely  superior  to  all  other  creatures. 
Of  course,  this  is  a  vanity  quite  common  among  living  things.  Each 
species  considers  itself  the  pinacle  of  creation  and  claims  to  have 
mounted  to  the  top  rung  of  the  ladder.  So,  for  instance,  think  the 
flea  and  cootie,  who  look  upon  man  as  infinitely  beneath  them,  as 
nothing  more  than  their  feeding-ground.  And,  in  fact,  they  quite 
successfully  match  their  wit  against  man's.  So,  likewise,  do  num- 


Humbug-Land  5 

berless  bacilli,  and  the  instinctive  powers  of  these  simple  organisms 
are  by  no  means  inferior  to  those  of  man. 

If  we  are  to  consider  one  creature  higher  than  another  in  the 
scale  of  evolution,  it  is  among  the  plants  where  Creation's  highest 
achievements  are  recorded.  Sessile  by  nature,  yet  by  their  ingenuity 
they  send  their  offspring  over  the  entire  habitable  globe,  and  they 
leave  no  force  of  nature,  nor  psychic  peculiarity  of  any  animal, 
unused,  to  accomplish  their  end.  Some  put  their  seeds  into  balloons 
and  send  them  drifting  upon  the  clouds ;  others  shoot  it  from  their 
pods  as  with  guns,  but  when  animals  appeared  the  plants  immediately 
made  the  whole  animal  kingdom  their  servant.  For  there  is  no 
animal  of  any  kind  but  what  must  perform  unconscious  service  for 
the  plants,  and  whenever  the  wit  of  man  or  animals  becomes  pitted 
against  the  instinct  of  the  plant,  the  plant  generally  comes  out  ahead. 
Numberless  insects  must  be  cupid's  willing  or  unwilling  messenger 
whenever  a  pistil  desires  to  mate  with  her  prince  charming  of  the 
far-distant  flower.  They  say  that  love  knows  no  barrier,  but  it  is 
among  the  plants  where  the  seemingly  unsurmountable  obstacles  are 
overcome  in  the  most  ingenious  manner.  Here  is  a  cherry  tree, 
which  wishes  to  establish  its  children  in  a  new  country  hundreds 
of  miles  distanct.  It  saw  that  the  birds  sitting  in  its  branches  could 
fly  through  the  air  to  that  new  country  and  straightway  it  deter- 
mined to  make  them  its  servants.  Even  we  Immortals  do  not  yet 
understand  how  the  cherry  tree's  instinct  learned  so  much  about  the 
nature  of  birds.  Many  plants  have  discovered  that  most  animals 
have  a  sweet  tooth,  and  whenever  they  want  an  animal  to  do  any- 
thing for  them,  they  offer  a  morsel  of  sugar  or  honey.  This  is  the 
universal  money  of  the  plant-world,  and  it  is  always  acceptable  at 
par  in  the  animal  kingdom.  Does  the  flower  in  its  gorgeous  wedding 
dress,  sigh  for  a  lover  from  afar?  It  offers  a  bit  of  nectar  to 
wasp,  or  bee,  or  butterfly,  as  payment  for  the  prince's  aeroplane  ride. 

But  the  cherry  tree  was  chiefly  solicitous  for  its  offspring. 
It  did  not  want  to  start  its  children  in  barren  soil,  worn  out  by 
the  parent  roots;  it  meant  to  plant  them  in  a  virgin  paradise.  So 
it  grew  ripe  red  cherries,  of  exactly  the  flavor  which  the  bird's 
palate  craved  beyond  anything  in  the  world.  The  bird,  eating  the 
cherry,  would  carry  the  stone  in  its  stomach  miles  distant  and 
drop  it  upon  new  soil.  We  do  not  know  how  the  cherry  tree  knew 
so  exactly  the  taste  of  the  birds,  nor  how  that  red  color  was  so 
fascinating  to  them,  nor  how  it  learned  the  intricate  chemical 
process  to  distil  the  sweet  pulp  out  of  earth  and  air,  nor  whence 
it  gets  its  wonderful  color.  Evidently,  it  spared  no  pains  in  offer- 
ing such  royal  feast.  And  this  is  the  one  thing  in  which  plants  are 
always  much  fairer  than  animals.  Though  they  make  animals  their 
servants,  they  always  pay  handsomely  for  any  service  rendered, 
while  animals,  and  especially  man,  the  most  beastly  of  all  animals, 
simply  destroy  and  spoil,  and  never  give  thought  of  fair  return.  It 
is  in  retaliation  for  this  wanton  spoliation  that  the  plants  are  com- 
pelled to  send  the  bacteria  into  the  animal  organism  in  order  to 
destroy  the  destroyer  and  make  his  carcass  again  available  for 
plant  food. 


6  Mendez  Pinto 

But  the  cherry  tree  knows  still  more.  While  it  offers  the  bird 
,  the  juicy  pulp,  it  embeds  its  offspring  in  a  hard  stone  case,  proof 
against  the  powerful  acids  of  the  bird's  stomach,  yet  open  to 
the  water  of  the  soil  when  germinating  time  comes.  Moreover,  so 
long  as  the  seed  is  still  immature,  it  keeps  its  cherry  green  and  so 
horribly  sour  no  bird  will  touch  it. 

All  animals  are  parasites  upon  plants,  and  as  a  parasite  cannot 
easily  reach  to  the  perfection  of  its  host,  it  is  probably  for  this 
reason  that  evolution  has  made  so  such  less  progress  among  animals 
than  it  has  made  in  the  plant  world. 

Among  animals,  Insects  have  reached  the  highest  perfection, 
and  among  the  Vertebrates  the  birds  have  reached  a  comparatively 
high  stage,  while  on  the  other  hand,  the  Carnivora,  such  as  lions, 
tigers,  wolves,  dogs  and  man,  occupy  a  compartively  low  plane. 

In  the  world's  evolutionary  history,  man  has  been  of  less  account 
than  any  other  species,  and  it  is  not  apparent  that  he  is  destined  to 
play  any  important  role.  The  first  universal  ice-age  would  wipe 
him  out,  if  he  does  not  before  that  time  destroy  himself  by  the 
follies  of  his  reason.  In  fact,  the  living  world  as  a  whole  could 
get  along  much  better  without  him.  So  long  as  he  remained  an 
uncivilized  son  of  nature  he  did  little  harm.  But  in  these  last  eons, 
owing  to  his  civilization,  that  vile  product  of  the  overgrowth  of  his 
brain,  he  has  become  an  intolerable  plague  in  nature,  denuding  the 
surface  of  the  earth  of  every  green  tree,  like  an  insect  plague  that 
devours  field  and  forest.  But  plagues  do  not  last  forever,  and  the 
plant-world  will  not  suffer  extirpation  by  civilized  man,  but  will 
send  the  seeds  of  destruction  into  his  own  being.  When  he  has 
destroyed  the  paradise  in  which  he  was  planted,  his  bones  will  rot 
on  the  bare  rocks,  and  the  seeds  of  plants  which  have  rested  while 
he  chewed  the  forest  into  paper  pulp,  will  celebrate  a  new  resur- 
rection day  and  grow  upon  his  carcass.  Then  flowers  once  more 
will  bloom  in  a  better  world 


IV.    HUMAN  CONSCIENCE  AND  MORALITY 
Who  is  Right f    Nature's  God  or  Man's  Conscience? 

As  a  peacock  is  proud  of  its  tail,  so  man  is  proud  of  his  con- 
science and  of  his  morality.  It  is  the  strangest  product  of  his  brain- 
box  which  tells  him  that  it  is  wicked  to  play,  to  enjoy  nature's 
gifts  of  goodness,  to  bask  in  sun  and  air,  to  loiter  by  the  brookside 
and  stroll  among  the  meadow  flowers  or  roam  at  will  in  the  forest 
temple  and  quaff  the  whole  of  the  delight  of  life.  Nature's  com- 
mandment to  all  creation  is,  "Six  days  shalt  thou  live  and  delight 
thyself,  and  on  the  seventh  shalt  thou  take  thy  fill  of  pleasure." 
But  man  has  changed  this  divine  oracle  and  says,  "Six  days  shalt 
thou  sweat  and  weary  thyself,  and  on  the  seventh  thou  shalt  hide 
thyself  from  the  wrath  of  Jehovah,  and  touch  naught  which  might 
delight  thy  soul,  for  in  sackcloth  and  ashes  shalt  thou  worship  thy 


Humbug-Land  7 

God,"  as  if  he  were  some  tyrant  whose  sole  satisfaction  is  in  the 
scourging  of  his  slaves.  Yet  men  exalt  their  conscience  to  be  the 
highest  law  of  the  universe. 

I  know  of  scarce  anything  akin  to  it  in  nature,  except  perhaps 
among  dogs,  who  feel  remorse  at  their  master's  scolding,  whether 
it  be  just  or  unjust.  The  commands  of  the  human  conscience  are 
almost  all  directly  contrary  to  the  God-given  natural  instincts.  For 
conscience's  sake  men  inflict  all  sorts  of  misery  upon  themselves, 
but  never  seek  to  do  that  which  is  good  in  nature.  For  conscience's 
sake  they  fast  and  scourge  themselves,  abstain  from  joy  and  pleas- 
ure, bind  themselves  down  to  the  burden  of  toil,  and  endure  slavery, 
but  on  the  other  hand,  for  conscience's  sake,  they  never  throw  off 
the  master's  yoke  or  seek  the  liberty  which  is  theirs  by  birthright. 
On  the  contrary,  in  the  name  of  conscience,  they  sacrifice  their  chil- 
dren to  Juggernaut,  to  Moloch,  to  Jahve  and  to  the  Ogre  of  War. 
For  conscience's  sake  they  swear  to  their  own  hurt  and  keep  the 
vows  that  do  them  harm.  Truly,  no  such  stupidity  was  ever  before 
heard  of  in  creation. 

In  a  similar  manner  the  whole  human  code  of  morality  is  based 
upon  the  idea  of  abstinence  from  that  which  is  good  and  that  the 
endurance  of  suffering  is  the  golden  path  to  virtue.  So  men  are 
ever  afraid  lest  there  be  too  much  feasting  in  life,  too  much  laugh- 
ter, too  much  play,  too  much  dancing,  too  much  frolic  and  sun- 
shine, too  much  freedom,  too  much  pleasure,  too  much  vacation, 
for  it  is  only  of  these  and  other  good  things,  that  their  conscience 
upbraids  them.  It  never  condemns  them  for  overwork,  for  fatigue, 
for  undernourishment,  for  dirt,  for  shabbiness,  for  pain,  for  tears, 
for  poverty,  for  lack  of  artistic  attainment,  for  broken  health  and 
wrinkles  before  their  time,  for  lack  of  vision  and  travel  and  oppor- 
tunity for  sightseeing.  Yet  all  these  are  high  crimes  and  treason 
against  life  and  nature.  For  nature  abhors  the  dwarfed  and  stunted 
growths  and  mercifully  blots  out  the  maimed  in  the  struggle  for 
existence,  for  it  meant  that  its  world  should  be  fair,  and  without 
spot  and  blemish.  The  capering  colt,  the  prancing  steed,  exuber- 
ance of  health  and  beauty  and  glory  of  form  and  fullness  of  life, 
are  her  goal.  But  man's  morality  insists  upon  starving  both  his 
body  and  soul,  so  that  he  alone  of  all  living  things  falls  tar  short 
of  what  his  natural  endowments  enable  him  to  be.  And  from  all 
creation  the  indignant  protest  goes  up  to  the  Eternal  Throne  against 
the  race  that  has  filled  its  days  with  pain  and  sorrow  and  knows 
no  sound  but  the  wailing  of  self-inflicted  misery  and  ever  refuses 
to  so  change  its  course  of  life  that  it  may  become  part  of  heaven's 
pean  of  joy  and  tumultuous  happiness. 

Yet  there  did  appear  One  among  them,  to  teach  them  the  ways 
of  life,  who  did  not  fast  as  did  the  disciples  of  John  and  the 
Pharisees,  but  who  taught  that  life  is  a  wedding  feast  and  that  it 
were  unbecoming  for  its  guests  to  fast  while  the  bridegroom  is 
with  them  (Mk.  2:18,19).  But  Him  they  did  not  heed:  they  choked 
His  voice  in  blood. 


8  Mendez  Pinto 

V.    HUMAN  CRUELTY  TO  THEIR  YOUNG 
"Spare  not  the  Rod!' 

Most  animals  show  a  very  tender  regard  toward  their  young, 
especially  during  the  period  of  infancy.  They  devote  the  greater 
part  of  their  time  to  hunt  food  for  them  or  else  spend  it  in  playing 
with  them  in  order  to  teach  their  offspring  the  sum-total  of  animal 
lore  which  they  possess,  to  train  them  in  dexterity  and  all  tricks 
useful  against  their  enemies,  etc.  Our  learned  sages  have  not 
recorded  anywhere  that  animals  willingly  harm  or  torture  their  off- 
spring during  the  period  of  immaturity  and  growth.  Since  the 
humans  are  an  offshoot  from  some  of  the  older  animals  they  have 
inherited  many  of  the  beautiful  and  noble  virtues  found  in  the 
animal  creation  and  so  it  comes  that  a  young  mother  will  grieve 
as  much  as  other  animals  do  should  her  infant  die.  If,  however, 
the  child  lives,  it  is  not  long  before  she  begins  to  abuse  it.  As  soon 
as  the  period  of  lactation  is  past,  she  begins  to  beat  it  with  switches 
or  rods,  or  slaps  it  in  anger  or  tortures  it  in  order  to  break  its 
will  and  train  it  to  slavish  obedience.  Even  their  sacred  books 
teach  them  to  beat  their  children  and  not  to  spare  the  rod.  Thus, 
the  life  of  the  human  infant  is  the  most  miserable  of  all  animals, 
even  if  it  be  born  to  the  gold  and  purple,  in  a  mansion,  or  a  king's 
palace,  since  among  these  great  ones  the  mother  considers  it  undig- 
nified to  suckle  her  own  infant,  she  dries  up  her  breasts,  and  turns 
the  child  over  to  servants  who  naturally  abuse  it  still  more  than 
would  its  own  parents. 

VI.    EDUCATION  BY  TORTURE 
The  Dull  Boy  and  Squirrel-Lore 

If  by  accident  the  lot  of  a  human  child  should  be  so  happy  as 
to  have  a  mother  as  kind  as  the  mothers  of  animal  children,  it  only 
lasts  till  the  sixth  or  seventh  year,  for  then  the  State  steps  in  and 
sends  the  child  to  school,  and  from  that  day  till  its  death,  happiness 
and  freedom  will  be  considered  a  sin  for  the  human  being.  Now, 
we  Immortals  justly  pride  ourselves  upon  our  educational  svstems, 
and  I  shall  not  have  a  little  difficulty  in  making  clear  the  difference 
between  our  own  and  human  schools,  especially  those  of  civilized 
countries,  for  the  uncivilized  races  are  much  less  harsh  and  exact- 
^  ing  toward  their  children  than  the  Christian  nations.  With  us,  the 
greater  part  of  our  time  is  devoted  to  our  schools.  In  fact,  giving 
the  gift  of  knowledge  is  one  of  the  highest  satisfactions  of  un- 
created existence.  But  we  have  only  one  thought,  viz.,  to  make 
happy  our  offspring.  Our  schoolhouses  are  our  great  play-houses, 
and  school-time  is  the  play-time  of  our  youth.  And  what  feats  of 
skill  and  daring  and  agility  they  accomplish !  How  they  delight  in 
the  race  from  the  Sun  to  Pleiades,  or  to  play  hide  and  seek  among 
the  planets!  And  as  for  knowledge,  who  could  ever  quench  their 
thirst?  They  hunt  the  Calculus  as  the  woodland  boy  hunts  the  nests 


T 

Humbug -Land  9 

of  birds  and  haunts  of  hare  and  squirrel,  and  they  love  to  win  in 
mathematics  as  much  as  in  chess  or  checkers.  And  history  thrills 
them  like  ghost  stories,  and  science  is  the  fairytale  of  their  eager 
minds.  But  if  at  any  time  we  perceive  that  concerning  some  valua- 
ble acquisition  of  knowledge  their  interest  is  not  naturally  awake, 
we  make  a  great  secret  of  it,  talk  of  it  only  in  whispers  amongst 
A  ourselves  and  give  them  to  understand  that  these  things  are  too 
great  and  wonderful  for  mere  youths  to  inquire  into.  We  never 
compel  them  to  learn  anything,  never  give  them  tasks  of  any  kind, 
nor  ever  make  the  taste  of  knowledge  bitter  and  odious  to  them  by 
tests  and  examination  papers.  As  if  a  cat-mother  did  not  know  the 
progress  of  her  kittens  without  a  written  examination  sheet  and 
marks  to  create  jealousy  among  her  family!  Instinct  upon  occasion 
is  short-sighted,  but  for  mountain-high  stupidity,  look  at  a  human 
high  school  system. 

For  human  schools  are  all  the  very  opposite  of  ours.  They  are 
fiendish  torture  houses,  where  children's  bodies  are  put  upon  the 
rack  and  their  minds  stupefied.  They  are  compelled  to  sit  still  by 
the  hour,  which  to  a  child  is  no  less  torture  than  to  hang  up  an 
adult  by  the  wrists.  The  stern  teacher  commands  them  to  give 
attention,  but  human,  like  other  animal  children,  are  attention  all 
over.  If  a  dog  saunters  into  the  class  room,  or  a  cat  jumps  through 
the  window,  or  a  spider  lets  himself  down  from  the  ceiling  to  find 
an  anchorage  upon  the  teacher's  lesson-book,  even  the  stupidest 
urchin  will  learn  in  five  minutes  what  could  not  be  drilled  into  him 
by  rote  in  six  generations.  He  will  be  able  to  give  the  minutest 
account  of  what  happened  and  he  can  add  thereto  the  most  wonder- 
ful embellishments  of  the  imagination.  And  if  the  teacher  would 
let  the  dull  boy  show  her  his  tricks  and  what  he  knows  about  his 
dog  and  the  fox  and  the  squirrel  in  the  woods,  she  would  find  an 
amazing  mass  of  knowledge  which  it  would  be  hard  for  the  head 
of  the  class  to  equal.  But  I  doubt  that  even  we  Invisibles,  to  whom 
Mathematics  is  second  nature,  would  be  able  to  learn  the  multipli- 
cation table,  were  it  to  be  drilled  into  us  as  knowledge  is  crammed 
into  the  human  stomach.  The  things  you  are  made  to  eat  seldom 
/  taste  good.  Therefore,  in  civilized  countries  the  open  sesame  of 
truth  is  closed  to  the  human  young.  Their  only  opportunity  is  the 
underground  class-room  whisper  and  the  tricks  they  are  enabled  to 
play  upon  the  teacher. 

VII.    THE  HUMAN  SOCIAL  STRUCTURE 

Under  the  Hangman's  Banner. 

Nothing  is  so  amazing  to  the  student  of  the  wonderful  variety 
of  life  in  its  manifold  evolutionary  expression,  as  is  the  structure  of 
the  human  social  organism.  It  is  the  one  great  anomaly  in  Nature. 
For  everywhere  in  the  world,  except  among  men,  there  is  freedom 
and  liberty  and  the  unquestioned  right  to  self-expression.  No  plant, 
no  tree,  no  flower,  no  animal,  whether  it  be  fish,  fowl,  or  worm  or 


10  Mendez  Pinto 

cattle,  or  beast  of  prey,  owes  obedience  to  anything  but  its  own 
nature  and  instinct,  but  man  conceives  that  his  whole  life  is  subject 
to  authority,  whether  it  be  Totem,  or  Ancestor,  or  God,  or  King,  or 
State  or  Custom,  or  what  not,  he  conceives  himself  beholden  to 
some  superior  autocracy  whose  will  and  decree  reigns  over  him  and 
to  whom  his  subjection  is  absolute.  So  it  is  interesting  to  see  a 
group  of  men  who  find  life  too  crowded  where  they  were  born,  go 
forth  to  seek  more  room.  The  first  thing  they  do  when  they  come 
into  a  new  country  is  to  select  one  or  more  of  their  number  to  be 
their  rulers,  then  they  build  a  jail,  or  stockade,  or  prison  and  erect 
a  gibbet  therein,  in  order  that  their  rulers  can  put  in  jail  those  who 
do  not  obey  their  decrees  and  hang  by  the  neck  "till  they  are  dead," 
any  who  dispute  their  authority.  This  is  the  most  astonishing 
thing  which  I  have  found  in  all  my  travels  to  and  fro  through  the 
earth  and  up  and  down  in  the  universe,  that  never  there  can  be 
found  a  human  social  unit  anywhere  without  its  hangman,  and 
never  anywhere  in  the  earth  below  or  the  heavens  above  can  you 
find  any  other  social  organism  with  either  prison-house  or  gibbet. 
For  all  other  human  traits  there  are  analogies  in  nature  among  the 
other  social  groups,  such  as  birds,  ants,  bees,  cattle,  wolves,  etc., 
but  the  hangman  is  the  characteristic  distinction  of  human  society 
from  that  of  animal  society. 

Every  social  organism  needs  co-ordination  and  order.  It  must 
be  able  to  cast  off,  or  bring  into  harmony,  anti-social  tendencies  or 
individuals,  in  order  to  function  and  persist.  It  must  find  ways  to 
subdue  those  who  would  arrogate  to  themselves  an  undue  portion 
of  the  feeding-ground,  who  would  set  themselves  up  above  their 
fellows,  who  would  feed  at  public  expense,  who  would  rob  or  kill 
their  neighbor,  or  who  would  drag  down  the  group  from  the  pur- 
suit of  lofty  ideals  to  maurauding  expeditions  upon  fellow  groups, 
for  in  the  end  every  maurauder  in  nature  dies  out.  In  short,  any 
social  group,  in  order  to  live,  must  be  able  to  control  and  cast  out 
social  disease  and  evil-doing.  And  so  every  animal  society  pro- 
tects itself  by  removing  in  one  way  or  another,  or  rendering  harm- 
less, the  anti-social  member,  yet  it  knows  only  too  well  that  mere 
refusal  to  run  with  the  herd,  or  refusal  to  bark  at  the  moon  with 
the  mob,  are  not  crimes.  Therefore,  so  long  as  the  individual  does 
not  kill  or  steal,  or  injure  the  life  of  the  herd,  its  liberty  is  re- 
spected and  is  left  to  its  own  devices.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
individual  member  persists  in  doing  injury,  there  is  no  vengeance, 
no  torture,  no  prison,  but  only  swift  and  effective  removal.  The 
ant  and  bee  colonies  and  even  mosquito  swarms,  which  live  an 
infinitely  more  complex  social  life  than  does  man,  accomplish  this 
by  their  natural  instincts,  or  by  the  mere  withdrawal  of  the  benefits 
of  the  social  order,  or  disfellowship  of  the  refractory  individual. 
It  is  only  human  society  which  coerces,  keeps  prison-houses  and 
torture  chambers  as  the  festering  sores  and  breeding  places  of  anti- 
social hatred  and  crime. 

Every  herd  has  its  social  customs  and  habits  which  it  does  not 
allow  to  be  broken.     Every  flock  of  birds  is  as  touchy  about  its 


Humbug-Land  11 

coat  of  feathers  as  the  French  people  are  about  their  flag-worship. 
The  creed  of  other  animal  societies  requires  that  all  must  srnell 
alike,  but  none  of  them  know  any  other  penalty  for  the  trans- 
gression of  their  statutes,  than  exclusion  from  the  joint-action  of 
the  herd.  If  the  contrari-minded  will  not  keep  the  tune,  they  are 
not  allowed  to  join  the  band.  If  they  cannot  keep  step,  they  are 
not  allowed  in  the  procession,  if  they  do  not  want  to  march  in 
line,  they  are  left  to  walk  by^  themselves.  Here  the  matter  ends. 
The  majority  goes  its  way,  the  minority  is  left  to  itself.  If  it 
repents,  it  is  restored  to  membership.  If  it  persists,  it  is  left  un- 
molested to  pursue  its  own  course.  No  animal  majority  ever  forces 
its  will  upon  an  individual  or  coerces  the  minority,  they  know 
nothing  of  the  autocratic  compulsions  of  human  democracies. 

In  the  bird  and  ape-families,  and  elsewhere,  upon  occasion,  the 
young  are  made  to  conform  to  the  law  of  the  tribe  by  the  superior 
strength  of  the  parent.  The  fledgling  is  instantly  snatched  from 
danger  by  main  force  if  it  does  not  heed  the  warning-cry  quickly 
enough,  or  give  up  the  poisonous  morsel  between  its  teeth,  but  no 
animal  society  ever  inflicts  punishment,  nor  ever  subjects  even  the 
most  wilful  individual  to  torture  or  degradation.  But  men  are 
opposite  to  animals  in  this  respect,  they  are  without  any  sense  of 
that  which  is  fitting.  Democracies  punish  everything  that  does  not 
run  with  the  common  herd  by  the  same  torture,  viz.,  imprisonment, 
whether  it  be  the  greater  wisdom  of  its  prophets  and  philosophers 
or  the  delinquencies  of  defectives  and  perverts.  The  Christ  and 
the  thief  are  nailed  to  the  same  cross.  Socrates  and  the  murderer 
drink  the  same  cup  of  hemlock.  Galileo  and  the  foot-pad  are 
thrown  into  the  same  dungeon.  Animal  societies  use  force  to  pre- 
vent the  immature  from  endangering  their  own  lives  or  the  safety 
of  the  group  to  their  enemies.  But  human  punishments  have  no 
such  benevolent  purposes:  they  intend  to  inflict  harm  and  injury 
upon  its  victims,  to  starve  the  body  of  the  prisoner,  deprive  him  of 
his  liberty,  degrade  his  honor,  kill  his  self-respect,  prick  his  flesh 
and  wound  the  image  of  God  that  is  within  him,  to  deprive  his 
family  of  the  bread-winner,  heap  contumely  upon  his  wife  and 
children,  tear  him  limb  from  limb  or  hang  him  by  the  neck,  in 
order  to  secure  Christian  justice.  Now  a  mad  dog  and  a  raving 
maniac  both  endanger  the  life  of  the  herd,  and  force  "without  stint 
and  limit"  must  be  used  to  restrain  them  or  render  them  harmless, 
but  what  fiendish  good  can  torture  accomplish?  We  Immortals 
know  that  nature  is  "red  in  tooth  and  claw"  and  We  hope  that 
more  evolutionary  experience  in  the  coming  eons  will  mitigate 
more  and  more  the  short-comings  of  the  ignorance  of  the  Creative 
World-Instinct,  but  at  such  an  abortion  as  human  "justice"  we 
stand  aghast. 

Animals  live  together  in  voluntary  communities.  All  those  who 
do  not  wish  toi  join  the  big  stysryr,  are  free  to  stay  outside.  There 
is  no  place  on  the  earth,  where  a  deer,  or  antelope  or  hartebeest 
may  not  roam  at  will,  there  are  no  boundaries  in  the  sky  that  a 
bird  may  not  cross,  but  men  are  tied  to  the  land  by  their  sovereigns, 


12  Mendes  Pinto 

and  they  may  not  travel  from  one  land  to  another  without  a  humble 
petition  for  a  passport.  The  life  of  the  individual  in  the  human 
herd  is  exceedingly  circumscribed  and  hedged  in.  The  police  will 
drag  him  to  jail  for  loafing  on  week-days  and  working  on  Sabbath- 
days,  he  is  taxed  for  building  a  house,  or  raising  a  crop  of  wheat, 
he  must  pay  a  fee  for  mating,  and  must  not  beget  children  without 
a  license,  and  they  hold  an  inquest  over  him  if  he  commits  suicide. 

Each  country  has  its  own  idolatries.  In  Tndia  they  fall  down 
before  Buddha,  in  Japan  they  do  obeisance  to  the  Emperor's  like- 
ness. In  Europe  they  take  off  their  hats  to  their  flags.  In  Turkey 
and  Arabia  they  revere  the  Crescent  and  hate  the  Infidel,  in  Chris- 
tian lands  they  worship  the  cross  and  hate  the  Turks,  but  in  all 
places  they  put  to  death  those  who  do  not  worship  the  local  fetish. 

But  stranger  still.  Among  animals  all  sparrows  are  allowed  to 
chirp  the  same  chirp,  no  matter  in  what  part  of  the  world  they 
happen  to  live.  All  dogs  are  allowed  to  bark  dog-fashion,  whether 
in  Berlin  or  Cairo,  and  all  sheep  may  bleat  the  sheep-language 
whether  in  Spain  or  in  Canada.  Not  so  civilized  man.  He  must 
speak  a  different  language  according  to  the  longitude  and  latitude 
of  the  place.  It  is  forbidden  to  speak  Danish  in  North  Germany 
or  French  in  South  Germany.  Nor  can  any  man,  under  pain  of 
imprisonment,  speak  Prussian  in  Elsass,  or  sing  German  in  America, 
or  talk  American  in  Mexico  or  South  America.  By  edict,  punish- 
able by  mob-violence,  the  Russian  language  is  seditious  in  the 
United  States,  neither  it  is  safe  to  travel  in  Soviet  countries  with 
French  or  American  Bibles.  And  whenever  they  have  a  war,  the 
race  and  nationality  of  peoples  is  changed  by  the  diplomats  at  the 
Peace  Table. 

VIII.    HUMAN  CHARACTERISTICS 
Riding  upon  his  Brother's  Back. 

The  whole  human  structure  is  permeated  with  this  doctrine  of 
the  absolute  authority  of  the  autocrat.  Even  in  democracies  the 
usual  punishment  for  the  assertion  that  "all  men  are  born  free  and 
equal"  is  twenty  years  imprisonment  at  hard  labor,  whereas  all 
animal  societies  are  free.  Animal  government  is  derived  solely  from 
mutual  agreement,  the  "consent  of  the  governed,"  and  they  never 
coerce  those  who  do  not  give  their  consent.  It  is,  of  course,  the 
autocrat's  duty  to  rule.  In  the  great  Shitirb  Monarchy,  this  office 
is  hereditary,  but  in  the  Nacirema  Dominion  they  elect  a  new 
autocrat  every  fourth  winter.  To  "rule"  means  to  make  people  do 
things  they  do  not  wish  to  do,  to  collect  taxes,  exact  tribute,  set 
tariffs  and  customs  upon  the  food  of  the  poor  and  require  obeisance 
to  overlords  and  genuflections  to  the  judges.  It  is,  of  course,  only 
human  beings  that  have  degenerated  so  far  as  to  desire  to  be  rulers 
over  their  fellow-creatures,  for  no  other  beings  ever  took  pleasure 
in  making  their  kith  and  kin  uncomfortable  or  inflict  authority  upon 
fellow-members  of  the  same  herd.  It  is  only  man  that  takes  pleas- 
ure in  the  misery  of  his  fellow-beings.  Animals  rejoice  in  being 


Humbug-Land  13 

equals  among  each  other,  there  is  neither  high  nor  low  in  the 
animal  herd,  neither  slave  nor  master.  But  in  Humbugland  nobody 
cares  to  be  rich  unless  the  many  are  poor,  and  nobody  cares  to  be 
king  except  there  be  millions  of  subjects  and  slaves.  It  is  con- 
sidered the  highest  human  achievement  to  tread  something  or  some-: 
body  under  foot.  Nobody  is  happy  unless  he  can  sit  upon  some- 
body's neck  and  suck  the  blood  of  those  under  him.  Yet  this 
human  race  is  endowed  with  enough  knowledge  to  secure  plenty, 
both  of  food  and  for  every  enjoyment  that  their  organism  is  capable 
of,  without  transgressing  the  laws  of  nature.  Animal  communities 
have  their  natural  enemies,  so  has  man,  but  man's  worst  enemy  by 
far  is  man. 

IX.    MAN'S  WORST  ENEMY  IS  MAN 
Fencing  in  the  North-Pole. 

It  never  seems  to  have  occurred  to  men  for  once  to  open  their 
eyes  and  look  about  themselves  and  take  an  example  from  the  older 
animal  civilizations  which  gained  the  wisdom  of  eons  when  man 
was  still  unknown  upon  the  face  of  the  earth.  Innumerable  animal 
societies  have  existed  for  untold  mUleniums  without  ever  having 
elected  a  hangman  over  them.  They  might  have  seen  a  herd  of 
buffaloes  defending  themselves  against  attack,  when  all  the  strong- 
est males  arrange  themselves  on  the  outer  circle  to  ward  off  the 
enemy.  But  in  human  battles  their  kings  and  generals  and  all  the 
mighty  ones  stay  far  away  from  the  fighting  line.  They  live  with 
their  courtesans  and  drink  wine,  while  they  send  their  soldiers  into 
the  trenches  and  death.  And  if  their  subjects  do  not  win,  then  they 
flee  from  their  armies  or  their  country  as  did  Bonaparte  Napoleon 
and  the  Hohenzollern  William.  But  if  the  fighters  win,  then  all 
the  glory  goes  to  the  general,  no  matter  how  needlessly  he  sacrificed 
his  regiments,  and  even  in  the  triumphal  march  the  common  soldier 
is  left  to  lick  the  dust.  In  the  animal  herd  it  is  always  the  oldest 
and  the  unattached  males  that  are  called  upon  to  sacrifice  them- 
selves in  defense  of  the  group,  but  in  the  human  herd  the  old  men 
always  drive  the  young  into  slaughter.  In  the  animal  herd  the  old 
males  volunteer  and  bear  the  brunt  of  the  battle,  but  in  the  human 
herd  the  old  men  conscript  the  very  flower  of  youth  for  the  death 
duty,  and  thus  in  war,  even  though  victorious,  the  human  herd 
loses  its  best  life-blood.  It  conscripts  its  finest  specimen  as  bullet- 
stoppers  in  order  to  shield  the  old,  the  rapacious  and  the  profiteers. 
The  noble  young  men  die  in  battle,  the  defectives  are  saved  to 
propagate  the  race,  thus  even  victory  becomes  the  nation's  grave  of 
its  manhood  and  liberty. 

Again,  if  they  had  searched  after  truth,  men  migh  have  seen 
how  the  bee-hive  and  the  ant-colony  prosper  without  slavery,  with- 
out prisons  and  without  torture  cells.  And  they  might  have  seen 
that  in  nature,  though  often  the  strong  take  advantage  of  the  weak, 
and  that  while  often  the  Big  Hog  drives  the  weaker  one  from  the 
trough,  yet  the  weaker  may  still  eat  while  the  stronger  is  asleep. 


14  Mendes  Pinto 

But  under  the  human  system  by  its  lawg  and  decrees,  the  king  can 
punish  while  asleep,  or  while  drunk,  and  can,  by  the  passport  regu- 
lations and  extraditions,  reach  the  fugitive  slave  in  the  uttermost 
ends  of  the  earth.  In  animal  society  the  power  of  oppression  on 
the  part  of  the  strong  is  strictly  limited  to  the  individual's  physical 
strength,  but  in  human  society  a  ruler  may  set  his  hoof  upon  a 
whole  nation.  So  their  insane  idea  that  each  human  life  is  subject 
to  the  autocrat,  instead  of  being  by  nature  free,  is  the  root-evil  of 
human  society  and  the  cause  of  its  unparalleled  misery  in  creation. 
In  all  its  aberrations,  Nature  has  produced  only  one  slave-race, 
which  is  mankind. 

While  man  has  tried  to  enslave  many  animals,  he  has  never 
been  able  to  put  them  under  such  yoke  as  he  does  his  own  kin. 
The  horse  and  ox  will  pull  his  plow  only  so  long  as  he  himself 
follows  after,  but  a  capitalist  can  get  thousands  and  thousands  of 
human  beings  to  toil  for  him  in  his  factories  while  he  goes  to 
foreign  countries  and  squanders  the  fruit  of  their  toil.  Animals 
yield  only  to  superior  force,  they  do  not  allow  themselves  to  be 
enslaved  by  law,  or  custom,  or  tradition,  as  do  the  humans. 

This  peculiar  human  social  structure  gives  birth  to  many  things 
so  exceedingly  strange  to  us.  All  animals  will  freely  partake  of 
the  food  which  nature  provided  for  them,  and  they  take  it  wherever 
they  find  it.  Not  so  men.  They  never  eat  or  drink  anything,  but 
first  pay  tribute  to  someone  for  it.  They  can  neither  hunt  nor  fish 
without  license,  neither  gather  fire-wood  nor  dig  coal  without  pay- 
ing fee  or  rent.  The  birds  of  the  air  eat  freely  of  the  fruit  and 
seeds  as  they  list,  but  should  you  set  down  a  strange  man  in  a 
civilized  country  and  he  had  no  money,  he  would  not  be  able  to 
find  a  single  thing  with  which  to  still  his  hunger.  Everything  there 
is  belongs  to  someone  else.  He  cannot  take  a  bath  in  ocean  or 
river,  he  cannot  lay  down  in  forest  or  meadow  or  by  the  roadside 
for  a  night's  rest  without  being  arrested  as  a  trespasser.  From  the 
beginning  of  time  men  have  done  nothing  but  fenced  off  the  earth 
against  each  other,  and  latterly  they  even  sent  forth  expeditions  to 
put  barbed  wire  around  the  North  Pole. 

It  is  true,  in  common  with  us  Invisibles,  they  have  the  divine 
commandment,  "Thou  shalt  not  steal."  In  our  realm  this  com- 
mandment is  the  highest  and  the  very  foundation  of  our  society, 
the  great  safeguard  of  our  liberty  and  happiness.  But  my  report 
will  scarce  be  believed  among  us  when  I  shall  here  chronicle  the 
very  different  interpretation  given  to  this  divine  law  by  mankind. 
With!  us  this  law  was  made  to  protect  the  weak  against  the  strong 
and  it  says  to  the  ruler  "Thou  shalt  not  take  away  the  liberty  of 
thy  people  for  any  cause,  neither  shalt  thou  levy  tribute  upon  them, 
nor  conscript  the  youth  of  the  land  to  thy  service,"  and  to  all 
others  it  declares  "Thou  shalt  not  take  anything  which  is  thy 
neighbor's,  neither  his  wife,  nor  his  children,  nor  his  job,  nor  any 
part  of  the  product  of  his  toil,  nor  his  means  of  livelihood,  neither 
his  sunshine,  nor  his  holiday,  nor  any  of  nature's  bounties,  his  free 
access  to  the  soil,  to  water  and  air,  to  oil  and  coal,  to  forest  and 


Humbug-Land  15 

meadow,  to  cotton  and  bread  and  wine,  to  warmth  and  shelter  and 
a  hearthstone." 

These  humans,  however,  in  their  institutions  for  higher  educa- 
tion have  departments,  called  Colleges  of  Law,  which  have  for 
their  sole  object  the  teaching  of  the  perverse  doctrine  that  the  law, 
"Thou  shalt  not  steal,"  has  application  only  to  the  poor  man  and 
means  "Thou  shalt  not  eat  of  the  fruit  of  the  field,  nor  of  the  har- 
vest which  thou  hast  sown,  without  first  paying  tithe  and  tax  and 
land  rent  and  duty.  Thou  shalt  pay  to  the  feudal  lord  for  the 
berries  of  the  woodland  which  nature  grew,  and  thou  shalt  not 
pasture  thy  cow  in  the  commons  without  paying  thy  lord,  thou 
shalt  not  touch  anything  which  thy  master  has  fenced  in,  thy  labor 
shall  be  decreed  by  thy  master  and  thou  shalt  not  protest  against 
thy  yoke,  but  deliver  the  full  number  of  bricks  and  pay  the  full 
price  for  the  straw  needful  to  make  them.  Thou  shalt  pay  for 
the  time-clock  and  the  efficiency  experts  which  thy  master  hath  set 
over  thee  and  thou  shalt  not  sigh  for  a  change  in  the  industrial 
order."  Human  courts  exist  for  the  sole  object  to  enforce  this 
doctrine.  I  know  amongst  us  Invisibles  these  things  are  incredible, 
but  I  have  recorded  only  the  naked  facts  and  can  only  repeat  what 
I  affirmed  in  the  beginning,  viz.,  that  though  the  humans  have  some 
power  of  reasoning,  all  their  conclusions  are  perverted. 

X.    LOYALTY  TO  DELUSIONS 
Looking  for  Work  in  Heaven. 

This  idea,  that  everything  which  man  needs,  belongs  to  some 
one  else  and  that  rent  or  tribute  is  to  be  paid  for  its  use,  is  deeply 
ingrained  in  the  whole  mental  make-up  of  the  human  tribe.  To 
animals  every  thing  is  free,  to  man  no  gift  of  God  or  nature  is 
free,  the  doctor  even  charges  a  fee  for  his  birth,  the  priest  for  his 
baptism,  the  State  for  his  marriage,  the  undertaker  for  his  funeral 
and  the  real-estate  agent  for  his  grave. 

What  men  regard  as  the  best  of  their  literature  is  built  up  on 
this  idea  of  loyalty  to  tribute  paying,  or  respect  for  the  landlord's 
fences.  There  is,  for  instance,  the  story  of  the  famous  Hebrew 
viceroy  of  Egypt,  Joseph  by  name,  who  in  seven  years  of  plenty 
highly  taxed  the  farmers  and  compelled  them  to  deliver  large  por- 
tions of  their  crops  into  the  royal  warehouses.  For  this  Pharaoh 
considered  him  the  wisest  man  in  all  Egypt.  Then  came  the  seven 
years  of  famine,  and  the  wisdom  of  Joseph  reached  still  greater 
heights.  He  sold  back  the  grain  to  the  same  farmers  from  whom 
he  had  taken  it  by  force  in  the  beginning;  first  at  famine  prices, 
then  when  all  their  money  was  gone,  he  sold  them  grain  for  their 
cattle  and  land,  and  when  that  was  gone,  he  sold  them  grain  for 
their  bodies  and  thus  made  every  Egyptian  a  slave  to  Pharaoh. 
Among  animals,  wherever  there  is  need,  there  is  the  right  to  eat, 
but  among  men  whosoever  is  in  need,  pays  blood-money. 

Then  there  is  the  story  of  Archbishop  Hanno  of  Mayence,  who 


16  Mendee  Pinto 

had  collected  vast  stores  of  wheat,  taken  from  the  peasants  of  his 
domain  as  tithes.  A  famine  came,  the  people  had  spent  all  their 
money,  but  Hanno  would  not  sell  even  at  famine  prices,  he  still 
wanted  more.  Now  his  people  were  good  Christian  people,  and 
though  their  women  and  children  were  starving,  they  never  touched 
Hanno's  wheat,  but  prayed  to  heaven  to  save  them  by  a  miracle. 
Hanno's  wheat  was  his,  for  he  had  taken  it  in  the  name  of  the 
proper  authority.  The  famine  grew,  and  everywhere  the  children 
died  and  at  last  it  became  so  severe  that  even  the  rats  were  dying 
of  starvation.  They  found  Hanno's  wheat,  and  knowing  nothing  of 
human  laws,  nor  having  any  respect  for  Christian  profiteers,  they 
ate  his  wheat.  And  when  all  the  wheat  was  gone  and  they  still 
were  hungry  they  came  into  Hanno's  house.  Then  he  fled  to  his 
castle  on  a  rock  in  the  river  Rhine,  but  the  rats  swam  the  river 
and  ate  Hanno  as  well  as  his  wheat.  And  this  was  the  punishment 
of  God  upon  him  for  his  hardness  of  heart.  Thus  justice  was  done, 
but  all  the  people  died  and  the  rats  alone  were  saved.  Men  con- 
sider themselves  greatly  superior  to  the  animals  in  that  they  are 
willing  to  die  for  an  idea,  whereas  animals  do  not  die  until  they 
have  to. 

In  a  Sunday  school  library  I  came  upon  the  story  of  a  starving 
mother  who  found  a  can  of  milk  by  the  roadside  that  had  dropped 
from  some  delivery-wagon.  This  heroic  mother  dragged  herself  to 
the  police-station  to  restore  the  can  of  milk  to  the  merchant  instead 
of  giving  it  to  her  dying  infant.  Both  the  mother  and  child  died 
in  the  street  later,  and  the  churches  and  great  merchants  of  that 
city  erected  a  statue  to  her  honor.  She  was  their  most  precious 
saint,  for  they  considered  that  her  loyalty  was  maintained  in  the 
face  of  great  temptation. 

We  used  to  think  that  Kram  Nawt,  our  great  wit-snapper,  was 
trying  to  make  sport  of  us,  when  he  told  us  of  the  antics  of  these 
humans  when  a  company  of  poor  people  had  died  and  landed  in 
Paradise.  Here  they  found  themselves  in  a  wonderful  garden,  full 
of  trees  and  shrubs  bearing  the  most  luscious  fruits.  There  was 
sparkling  wine  flowing  from  the  water-faucets,  and  there  were 
glimpses  of  beautiful  angels,  clothed  only  in  sunlight.  So  they  had 
to  shut  their  eyes  continually  lest  they  should  behold  unlawful 
beauty.  Therefore  they  kept  their  eyes  mostly  to  the  ground  and 
were  looking  for  the  signs  to  warn  them  off  the  grass  and  the 
"No  Trespassing"  placards.  But  they  did  not  find  any  of  these, 
nor  could  they  discover  the  fences.  After  a  while  they  became 
very  hungry,  and  the  hungrier  they  became  the  more  inviting 
seemed  the  fruit-laden  trees.  They  looked  around  for  the  armed 
guards  and  the  policemen,  but  they  did  not  see  any,  though  they 
felt  sure  they  were  merely  hiding  behind  the  bushes  to  catch  them 
unawares.  As  they  walked  on,  they  came  upon  a  wide,  bright 
street.  They  saw  gold-pieces  scattered  everywhere  as  if  the  whole 
U.  S.  Mint  had  been  spilled  over  it,  but  their  conscience  reminded 
them  that  they  had  just  entered  heaven,  and  they  could  not  pos- 
sibly begin  life  there  by  stealing  or  taking  anything  that  was  not 


Humbug-Land  17 

theirs.  Then  they  came  to  the  market-place  and  there  was  every- 
thing there  that  they  had  dreamed  of  might  be  found  in  their 
Lord's  castle  down  below.  But  there  were  no  salesmen.  They 
passed  booths  upon  booths  with  the  most  delicious  viands  and  con- 
stantly became  hungrier  and  hungrier.  They  had  no  money  and  to 
their  consternation  found  there  were  not  even  pockets  in  their 
heavenly  robes.  Never  before  had  they  realized  how  poor  in  the 
midst  of  plenty  is  a  man  without  money.  As  they  grew  faint  they 
dragged  themselves  back  to  the  Gate  of  Paradise  and  asked  Saint 
Peter  to  let  them  out  again  as  they  were  starving.  "Starving  in 
heaven !"  said  Saint  Peter  to  them,  "did  you  not  see  all  the  trees 
laden  with  fruit  and  all  the  tables  set  for  a  feast?"  "Yes,"  they 
said,  "but  we  could  not  find  the  ticket-seller,  neither  have  we  any 
money  and  are  out  of  work."  At  this  Saint  Peter  became  angry 
for  he  regarded  it  as  an  insult  that  anybody  should  look  for  work 
in  heaven.  "You  fools,"  he  said,  "in  heaven  everything  is  as  free 
as  it  is  in  nature  itself,  and  if  you  have:  not  sense  enough  to  open 
your  mouths  when  it  rains  pottage,  I  can  do  nothing  for  you."  So 
he  kicked  them  out. 

I  myself  thought  that  our  great  humorist  was  merely  trying  to 
tell  us  a  Munchhausen  tale,  but  in  the  course  of  my  investigations 
in  order  to  understand  the  machinery  of  the  human  mind,  I  at- 
tended six  semesters  in  the  law  course  of  the  famous  University 
at  Ogacich  on  lake  Nagichim.  That  is  what  they  teach  there,  not 
in  plain  English,  lest  the  Proletariat  become  restless,  but  in  pidgin 
Latin,  and  learned  circumlocution. 

XI.    DISCORDANT  SOCIAL  INSTINCTS 
Is  Man  a  Mosquito,  Bee,  Ant,  Bird  or  Beaver? 

Man's  social  instincts  are  the  most  unstable  and  discordant  of 
all  creatures.  They  are  still  in  flux.  Man  not  only  does  not  know 
how  to  live  to  best  advantage,  he  does  not  even  know  how  he 
wants  to  live.  So  he  has  experimented  with  numerous  forms  of 
social  life,  but  owing  to  his  monumental  stupidity,  has  always 
landed  in  some  kind  of  slavery.  All  animals  have  developed  a 
social  form  of  life  best  adapted  to  their  physical  organism  and  to 
the  best  interests  of  their  tribe.  But  when  man  was  created,  I 
suppose  Nature  was  tired  and  simply  wiped  the  remnants  of  her 
wonderful  achievements  in  mortal  creation,  off  the  table.  Out  of 
this  conglomeration  grew  man,  an  unorganized  mixture  of  both 
good  and  bad,  without  any  definite  place  or  purpose  in  the  world. 
But  each  animal  has  found  his  proper  place  and  he  lives  so  as  to 
contribute  his  mite  to  the  music  of  the  spheres.  Some  animals  are 
almost  solitary  in  habit,  others  are  tribal,  others  live  together  in 
flocks  or  herds,  others  in  colonies,  and  some  have  elaborated  the 
most  extensive  communistic  societies,  like  the  ants,  or  bees,  for 
example. 

In  man,  the  gregarious  instincts  are  probably  the  strongest,  for 
he  cannot  endure  loneliness,  nevertheless  he  also  exhibits  strong 


18  Mendez  Pinto 

individualistic  tendencies.  The  communistic  instinct  is  exceedingly 
weak  and  little  developed.  Likewise  the  altruistic  instinct  is  very 
weak.  No  human  creature  ever  sacrifices  himself  unquestioningly 
for  the  welfare  of  the  social  group  as  does  the  ant  or  bee.  He 
never  without  compulsion  gathers  anything  for  the  social  store  and 
only  will  bequeath  some  of  his  property  to  the  public  in  return  for 
being  honored  with  a  statue  in  the  market-place  or  fame  in  the 
history  books.  Men  are  exceedingly  vain,  they  will  spend  fortunes 
to  compel  posterity  to  read  their  epitaphs.  But  man  does  not  even 
respond  to  the  altruistic  motive  as  readily  as  does  the  bull  for  the 
herd.  The  attachment  to  his  children  is  scarce  as  strong  as  that  of 
the  hen  for  her  brood.  Human  mother-love  stands  on  a  very  low 
scale  in  nature.  Most  European  mothers  will  allow  their  children 
to  be  taken  from  them  and  thrown  into  jail  or  sent  to  the  trenches 
without  sacrificing  their  life  to  protect  them  as  does  the  hen  for 
her  chick.  Likewise  the  African  mother  allows  the  white  robber  to 
carry  her  children  into  slavery  without  protecting  them  unto  death. 
But  no  matter  how  unequal  the  fight,  nor  what  the  odds,  the  animal 
mother's  young  can  only  be  taken  from  her  over  her  dead  body 
unless  she  is  tricked  into  trusting  man's  deceit. 

Of  all  animals,  man  protects  his  offspring  the  least,  he  will 
sacrifice  them  to  his  gods,  to  his  religion,  to  his  greed,  to  his  lust. 
The  most  heinous  crime  in  animal  society  is  for  the  parent  to 
snatch  the  food  out  of  the  mouth  of  its  young,  but  man  often  lives 
on  the  labor  of  his  children.  Society  in  its  industrialism  sucks  the 
blood  of  its  young  and  mortgages  the  whole  future  of  the  coming 
generation  to  its  war-debts.  The  life  of  the  human  young  is 
dreary  indeed.  His  playtime  is  stolen  by  the  school,  or  turned  into 
gold  by  mine  or  factory,  by  sweatshop  and  spinnery,  whereas  the 
youth  of  animals  is  an  endless  riot  of  fun  and  play-time. 

The  human  society  supports  all  manner  of  drones,  such  as 
kings,  generals,  standing  armies,  military  dignities,  battleships,  detec- 
tives, lawyers,  judges,  beaurocrats  without  number,  advertisers, 
money-lenders,  stock-jobbers,  preachers,  soothsayers,  astrologers, 
dream  interpreters,  and  what  not,  who  perform  no  economically 
beneficial  service.  But  human  society  is  not  like  the  bees,  who  each 
fall  kill  off  the  greater  part  of  the  drones  in  order  to  keep  their 
proportion  in  endurable  numbers  and  to  get  rid  of  the  honey-eaters 
in  winter. 

No  doubt,  if  man  ever  should  come  to  believe  in  liberty  as  his 
natural  right  like  that  of  any  other  animal,  he  would  escape  most 
of  his  miseries.  If  human  society  should  rid  itself  of  its  drones  it 
would  save  itself  half  of  its  labor.  If  it  should  awaken  from  its 
toil-drunkenness  and  spend  its  time  in  social  enjoyment,  instead  of 
burrowing  in  the  earth  after  gold  or  diamonds,  or  wallowing  in  the 
dirt  after  gasoline,  it  might  have  something  of  the  enjoyments  of 
the  animal  creation. 

Still  more,  if  every  man  would  accept  the  responsibility  for  his 
own  life,  carve  out  his  own  existence,  as  does  every  animal,  instead 
of  lazily  accepting  wages  or  salary,  shirking  responsibility,  and 


Humbug-Land  19 

merely  doing  what  he  is  told  to  do;  he  might  hold  high  his  head 
and  feel  himself  not  unworthy  of  a  place  in  creation. 

Man  is  the  worst  parasite  in  nature,  more  than  anything  else 
does  he  dread  the  duty  of  shifting  for  himself.  Promise  a  man 
that  you  will  feed  him,  however  poorly,  and  he  will  accept  any 
slavery  you  have  a  mind  to  impose  upon  him.  In  fact,  there  are 
some  among  them,  who  preach  as  their  Utopia  the  shifting  of  all 
leadership  and  responsibility  to  the  State  and  dream  of  the  time 
when  the  State  will  feed  and  house  the  whole  tribe.  Individual 
initiative,  of  which  the  whole  bird-world  is  bubbling  over,  casts 
fear  into  the  hearts  of  most  men.  The  pioneering  spirit  is  not 
within  them;  if  you  will  let  him,  he  will  suck  the  teat  of  charity 
till  his  death  without  any  exertion  on  his  own  part,  but  birds  go 
honey-mooning  in  the  arctic  circle  and  keep  a  summer-home  in 
Africa.  Animals  are  too  proud  ever  to  ask  alms  of  their  fellows, 
if  on  account  of  age  or  injury  they  can  no  longer  shift  for  them- 
selves, they  lie  down  and  die  nobly  and  refuse  to  make  themselves 
a  burden  to  their  fellows  or  stand  in  the  way  of  their  happiness. 
But  human  society  is  full  of  decrepits  which  beg  alms  of  their 
fellows.  In  nature  no  matured  creature  has  a  right  to  live  that  is 
not  able  to  support  itself.  The  old  are  to  give  the  young  a  boost, 
after  that  it  is  their  duty  to  die.  No  old  member  of  the  species 
has  any  right  to  rob  youth  of  the  joy  of  its  life. 

Animals  do  not  offer  to  sell  their  bodies  or  their  liberties  for 
food  or  shelter.  If  they  cannot  find  food  by  their  own  strength, 
they  die,  they  do  not  offer  to  work  for  wages.  They  sometimes 
suffer  enslavement  from  man,  but  only  in  yielding  to  superior  force 
or  cunning.  You  cannot  coax  a  horse  into  harness  with  a  bundle 
of  hay  as  you  can  a  man  by  holding  out  a  meal-ticket.  Neither  do 
animals  sell  their  souls  for  a  mess  of  pottage,  as  do  the  intellectuals 
among  mankind. 

Should  one  attempt  to  take  an  average  of  man's  conflicting  in- 
stincts which  have  fallen  to  him  from  various  animal  forbears,  it 
would  seem  that  they  could  best  be  brought  into  harmony  if 
modelled  after  some  form  of  social  life  among  the  birds.  In  bird- 
societies  food-getting,  nest-building,  home-making,  etc.,  are  all  left 
to  the  individual  pair  or  family.  They  come  together  in  large  as- 
semblies chiefly  for  mutual  admiration,  but  upon  occasion,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  migratory  birds,  their  journeys  are  undertaken  in  com- 
pany. Or,  as  in  the  case  of  crows,  food-hunting  is  sometimes  under- 
taken together,  in  jolly  company,  as  when  a  whole  flock  swoops 
down  upon  a  plowed  field,  posts  sentinels  on  the  outskirts  and 
gives  itself  over  to  the  feast. 

This  form  of  social  life  allows  the  widest  scope  for  individual 
self-expression,  as  well  as  securing  the  widest  reward  of  social 
pleasures  in  keeping  company  with  its  fellows.  The  sum  total  of 
the  joys  of  life  in  such  a  social  structure  is  incomparably  greater 
than  in  a  communistic  ant-colony  or  the  bee-hive.  Among  the 
Mammals  the  beaver  tribes  have  adopted  a  similar  social  structure 
and  they  have  reached  a  comparatively  high  civilization.  In  the 


20  Mendez  Pinto 

communistic  bee-hive  the  workers  contribute  the  sum  total  of  their 
labor  to  the  good  of  the  whole  and  only  take  a  meagre  portion  for 
themselves.  In  the  bird-societies  the  individual  labors  only  for 
himself,  his  service  to  the  flock  is  negligible,  but  all  take  the  joys 
of  life  together  and  sing  each  other's  praises.  The  sound  of  praise 
also  seems  sweet  to  man.  So,  if  the  race  of  man  should  ever  be 
accepted  as  one  of  the  permanent  orders  of  life  in  nature,  his  social 
structure  will  probably  settle  somewhere  between  that  of  birds  or 
beavers,  with  some  elements  of  the  communistic  societies. 

XII.    MAN'S  CRUELTY  TO  HIS  FEMALE 

The  Spittoon-Cleaner. 

From  the  earliest  times  man  has  differed  from  all  other  animals 
in  his  cruelty  to  his  females.  He  has  always  treated  woman  as  an 
inferior,  enslaved  her  and  shifted  the  greatest  burden  of  labor  upon 
her  back.  No  male  amongst  the  animals  ever  makes  the  female 
serve  him,  or  wait  upon  him,  or  procure  his  food,  but  in  the  human 
race  the  female  literally  carries  the  male  on  her  back  as  her  life- 
long tormentor.  She  must  do  all  sorts  of  menial  service  for  him, 
cook  his  food,  clean  his  spittoons  and  wash  his  linen.  Even  in  early 
tribal  days  man's  brutality  fell  heavily  upon  woman,  but  in  civilized 
society  woman's  lot  has  become  incomparably  worse.  In  early  days 
woman  was  generally  the  bread-winner  and  as  such  enjoyed  a  con- 
siderable economic  independence.  The  old  tribal  hulk  of  a  male,  no 
matter  what  his  bragging  in  the  market-place,  could  not  get  a  good 
meal,  unless  he  was  agreeable  to  his  mate  at  home.  In  civilized 
society  woman  is  not  considered  the  bread-winner,  even  though  the 
bulk  of  toil  lies  upon  her  shoulders,  she  is  merely  the  servant  of 
man  or  the  plaything  of  his  lust,  for  marriage  deprives  woman  of 
her  economic  equality  and  independence.  She  has  no  share,  nor 
voice,  or  real  partnership,  in  her  husband's  business,  she  is  not  even 
allowed  to  spend  her  own  earnings  according  to  her  own  desires 
without  giving  an  account  to  her  lord  and  master.  Even  in  well-to- 
do  families  a  man  does  not  pay  his  wife  as  much  wages  as  he  does 
his  butler  or  chauffeur. 

In  animal  society  all  children  are  lawful,  but  in  human  society 
only  the  children  licensed  by  the  State  are  legal.  All  others  are 
bastards  and  are  violently  persecuted  both  by  social  ostracism  and 
the  State.  They  are  disinherited  by  law  and  life-long  contumely  is 
heaped  upon  them,  even  though  nature  has  not  condemned  them 
with  endowments  inferior  to  the  children  legalized  by  the  State. 
In  human  society  woman  becomes  an  outcast,  not  by  doing  violence 
to  her  God-given  instincts,  but  by  merely  forgetting  to  have  rice 
and  old  shoes  thrown  at  her,  while  submission  to  a  repulsive  male 
who  has  paid  the  wedding-fee  is  considered  her  acme  of  chastity. 
It  is  not  so  in  nature,  for  among  animals  sexual  congress  without 
love  and  mutual  desire  is  held  the  "unnatural  crime"  of  which  none 
but  man  is  guilty.  There  is  no  rape,  no  prostitution,  no  auction  of 
the  sanctuary  of  the  soul  and  no  venereal  disease  among  the 


Humbug-Land  21 

animals.  They  are  the  fruits  of  the  Christian  civilization  with  its 
wage-slavery,  its  poverty,  its  industrial  exploitation,  its  compulsory 
military  service,  its  prisons  and  its  holy  crusades. 

The  highest  law  in  the  universe  is  the  female  mating-instinct. 
Upon  it  depends  the  existence  of  the  species  and  therefore  nature 
has  endowed  it  with  the  most  wonderful  prescience  and  hedged  it 
in  with  the  strongest  safeguards.  Woman,  where  she  is  free  from 
economic  or  social,  or  religious  compulsion,  does  not  willingly  mate 
with  disease  nor  anything  less  than  a  god.  Nature  creates  a  super- 
fluity of  males  in  order  that  the  female  may  have  her  choice  of 
the  best.  Everywhere  in  nature  the  right  of  the  male  is  far  below 
that  of  the  female,  her  universal  law  is  "Women  and  children  and 
their  welfare  first."  Everything  else  comes  after,  even  man  with 
his  sacraments  and  conceits. 

XIII.    HUMAN  BLOODTHIRSTINESS  (THE  WHITE 
PLAGUE) 

From  Paradise  to  Packinghouse. 

Another  erratic  peculiarity  of  the  human  race  is  its  wanton 
cruelty  and  unbelievable  bloodthirstiness.  If  a  caterpillar  or  a  worm 
cross  the  path  of  one  of  these  humans,  it  is  immediately  crushed  to 
death.  Human  children  catch  butterflies  and  tear  them  limb  from 
limb  for  sport.  If  accidentally  they  scare  up  a  rabbit  they  imme- 
diately chase  it  to  death.  If  they  find  a  bird's  nest,  they  destroy 
the  eggs.  Any  flower  that  blooms  they  will  pluck,  they  burn  down 
the  forests:  in  short,  they  kill  what  they  can  for  the  mere  sake  of 
killing.  Their  greatest  sports  are  their  hunting  expeditions  in  which 
they  shoot  numberless  deer,  rabbits,  doves,  quails,  partridges,  ducks 
and  geese.  There  is  no  living  thing  safe  from  their  attacks  any- 
where. Their  painters  and  poets  glorify  war  and  the  chase. 

The  lairs  of  these  humansi  are  filled  with  the  skins  of  animals 
and  with  cut  flowers  and  broken  branches  as  ornaments.  Every-* 
where  they  exhibit  the  trophies  of  their  destruction.  And  their 
women  are  no  less  cruel  than  the  males.  They  think  it  great  honor 
to  receive  bundles  of  broken  blossoms  from  their  admirers  and  they 
bedeck  themselves  with  the  carcasses  of  birds  and  the  furs  of  other 
animals.  In  times  of  war  often  they  drive  the  men  back  into  battle 
and  their  great  "women's  magazines"  in  war-time  represent  the 
blood-stained  helmet  of  the  enemy  as  the  trophy  most  of  all  desired 
by  Christian  maidens.  Companies  of  young  girls  go  out  upon  the 
street  to  pin  white  feathers  upon  some  other  girl's  lover  in  order 
to  force  him  into  war. 

Five  hundred  moons  ago  the  Western  continent  was  a  paradise, 
covered  with  forests  and  with  steppes,  the  home  of  the  buffalo  and 
beaver  and  deer  and  turkey.  Then  came  the  White  Plague  over 
the  country.  They  murdered  the  Red  tribes,  which  had  done  little 
damage  in  nature.  They  rooted  up  the  forests  and  exterminated 
the  buffalo  and  beaver.  Today  the  whole  land  is  nothing  but  piles 
of  stones,  barren  rock,  slag,  puddles  of  oil,  ugly  sky-scrapers, 
cement  and  coal-dust,  barbed  wire  and  iron  rails.  Their  cities  reek 
with  the  stench  of  their  slaughter-houses  and  their  factories. 


22  Mendez  Pinto 

But  most  cruel  they  are  to  each  other.  All  their  gods  are  mon- 
sters of  cruelty  which  can  be  appeased  only  by  human  sacrifices. 
Moloch  had  children  for  breakfast.  To  Jehovah,  Jephtha  sacrificed 
his  daughter,  and  in  the  Christian  theology  they  even  have  a  God 
who  would  be  appeased  by  nothing  but  the  slaughter  of  his  own  son. 

But  most  noticeable  is  their  bloodthirstiness  when  the  delusion 
of  war  overtakes  them.  And  it  is  the  most  civilized  nations  which 
are  the  most  bloodthirsty  and  stage  the  most  extensive  killings. 
Their  most  approved  way  of  fighting  is  hand  to  hand  combat  with 
bayonets.  The  people  at  home  are  never  satisfied  until  their  sol- 
diers thus  meet  the  enemy.  They  must  show  him  the  cold  steel. 
No  victory  is  accounted  worth  anything  except  that  in  which  the 
corpses  can  be  counted  by  the  tens  of  thousands.  Civilized  warfare 
means  man's  disemboweling  of  each  other  with  the  bayonet,  for 
civilized  peoples  frown  upon  any  method  of  warfare  which  makes 
killing  painless  or  is  accomplished  at  long  distance.  Once  upon  a 
time  when  they  had  a  conference  to  make  laws  of  war,  it  was 
proposed  to  introduce  methods  of  asphyxiation,  this  was  howled 
down  as  inhuman,  because  it  would  make  the  soldier's  death  pain- 
less. No  soldier  can  be  considered  a  hero  unless  he  has  been 
tangled  up  in  the  entrails  of  his  antagonist.  There  used  to  be  great 
opposition  to  firearms  in  war,  but  they  were  finally  permitted  when 
it  was  seen  that  a  bullet,  or  a  shell,  could  spatter  human  brains  all 
over  the  combatants.  Likewise,  when  it  was  proposed  to  sink  ships 
secretly  by  electric  currents,  this  raised  a  great  outcry,  for  the 
sailors  would  then  find  a  painless  grave  in  the  sea.  No  method  of 
sea-warfare  is  permitted  by  civilized  peoples  save  such  as  will  blow 
up  the  ships  with  shells  that  scatter  the  entrails  of  the  sailors  upon 
the  deck  or  scald  them  to  death  in  the  engine-room. 

XIV.    HUMAN  TRICKERY  AND  DECEITFULNESS 
The  Humane  Society  and  the  Judas-Kiss. 

Among  all  animals,  the  humans  are  the  most  faithless  and 
treacherous.  Their  whole  life  may  be  said  to  be  a  lie  and  a  bundle 
of  deceit.  No  animal  can  ever  trust  man,  for  it  will  find  him  a 
deceiver  in  the  end.  Even  the  dog,  which  trusts  so  implicitly,  finds 
that  his  master  has  a  bullet  for  him.  There  is  not  any  animal  with 
which  man  makes  friend,  whose  head  he  will  not  finally  cut  off. 
And  he  always  does  his  killing  deceitfully.  He  hold*  out  bits  of 
delicacies,  but  underneath  it  is  his  trap.  If  he  would  fight  fair, 
like  the  lion,  the  shark,  or  the  tiger,  other  animals  might  take 
proper  precaution  against  him.  But  there  is  always  a  hook  in  his 
bait.  How  many  millions  of  fish  has  man  lured  to  an  untimely  end 
by  his  trickery!  And  he  calls  fishing  fine  sport.  Everywhere  he 
uses  soft  words  toward  his  fellow-animals,  but  there  is  murder  in 
his  heart.  He  uses  decoys  and  bell-wethers,  to  lead  bird  and  sheep 
into  his  snare  and  murder-machines.  All  his  pretended  kindness 
towards  animals  is  a  Judas-kiss. 

And  he  practices  his  trickeries  upon  plants  as  well  as  upon 
animals.  He  plucks  their  flowers  before  they  have  set  fruit  and 
stews  them  by  the  million  in  his  retorts  to  steal  their  fragrance. 
He  stimulates  or  deprives  them  of  their  sexual  organs  and  turns 
them  all  into  monstrosities.  Pears,  peaches  and  oranges  he  has  so 


Humbug-Land  23 

perverted  that  their  seed  is  no  longer  able  to  propagate  itself  like 
the  wild  species.  Likewise  he  has  abused  numberless  flowers,  from 
lily  and  anemone  to  rose  and  hollyhock.  He  has  changed  their 
chaste,  but  wonderfully  beautiful  corollas,  into  hideous  balls  or 
monstrous  doubles.  For  man  haa  no  eye  for  beauty  and  grace,  he 
is  nothing  but  a  beast  of  destruction  upon  the  face  of  the  earth. 

As  man's  mind,  so  is  his  body,  like  unto  his  inner  self,  the 
most  hideous  of  creatures,  especially  that  of  the  male.  It  is  a 
crooked  heap  of  bones  which  he  must  hide  under  clothes  lest  his 
degradation  be  seen.  It  is  only  for  a  few  moons  that  even  his 
virgins  possess  bodies  with  lines  of  grace  comparable  to  other 
animals.  Animals  maintain  the  grace  and  beauty  of  their  bodies 
till  the  time  of  their  death,  but  after  the  first  matings  man's  grace 
of  form  is  gone  and  he  wanders  around  upon  the  earth  as  a  living 
skeleton  or  scare-crow. 

XV.    THE  CULT  OF  TORTURE 
"Lex  Taliones"  and  the  CHRISTIAN  HATE. 

The  Christian  civilization  is  founded  upon  vengeance  and  the 
intensive  cult  of  torture.  The  hate  of  modern  civilized  peoples  is 
endless.  The  Barbarians  scalped  their  victims,  or  roasted  and  ate 
them.  Later  as  men  became  more  civilized,  they  used  the  rack,  the 
cross,  the  wheel,  or  quartered  the  captives  of  their  justice,  but 
under  all  these  circumstances  death  soon  set  free  their  victims  from 
any  further  suffering.  But  the  prisons  of  civilized  society  torture 
their  victims  for  years  and  years  on  end,  and  if  by  chance  one  of 
them  should  become  sick,  they  send  them  to  a  hospital  to  nurse 
them  back  to  health  in  order  that  they  may  complete  the  number 
of  years  of  torture  allotted  to  them.  All  the  punishments  of 
civilized  society  are  especially  designed  to  -degrade  and  hack  to 
pieces  the  soul  of  man.  Few  are  criminals  at  heart  when  they  are 
first  sent  to  prison,  but  none  ever  escape  except  seared  in  soul  and 
mortally  wounded  in  their  better  nature.  The  bloodlust  of  the 
animal  is  hot  and  fierce,  even  the  passion  of  the  mob  is  but  mo- 
mentary, but  the  bloodlust  of  civilized  society  is  cold  and  calcu- 
lating and  as  relentless  as  religious  animosity.  The  animal  soon 
forgets  his  hate  and  desire  for  revenge,  but  the  Christian  State 
never  forgets.  If  a  man  escapes  from  their  prisons,  flees  to  a  new 
country  and  lives  the  life  of  a  model  citizen  for  twenty  years,  as 
soon  as  he  is  discovered  he  is  thrown  back  into  the  dungeon.  Men 
hold  nothing  so  sacred  as  the  torture  which  they  have  decreed  upon 
their  fellow-men. 

The  old  lex  taliones  of  primtive  society  was  "loaf  lor  loaf,  eye 
for  eye,  tooth  for  tooth,"  but  civilized  law  is  years  of  penitentiary 
for  stealing  a  loaf,  and  it  is  death  for  disobedience  to  military 
service.  Among  primitive  peoples  society  was  satisfied  with  actual 
justice,  it  strictly  forbade  the  taking  of  vengeance  (Lev.  19:17). 
"Thou  shalt  not  take  vengeance.  If  a  man  cause  a  blemish  in  his 
neighbor,  as  he  hath  done,  so  shall  it  be  done  to  him:  breach  for 
breach,"  etc.  Restitution  for  the  damage  done  was  all  that  was 
exacted  (Lev.  24:19),  but  modern  law  is  nearly  all  vengeance. 
Even  those  merely  accused  of  crime,  must  submit  to  the  indignities 


24  Mendeg  Pinto 

of  the  police-systems,  have  their  photograph  and  finger-prints  taken 
for  the  rogue's  gallery.  The  whole  administration  of  justice  in 
modern  society  is  designed  to  trample  a  man's  dignity  into  the  mud 
and  inflict  mortal  wounds  in  his  soul.  Look  at  the  lion  in  the  cage, 
proud  monarch  of  the  desert  when  free,  but  crushed  and  broken, 
or  furious  and  snarling,  behind  the  bars.  So  no  man  can  be  put 
behind  the  bars  without  suffering  degradation  of  soul.  There  are 
asylums  for  the  feeble-minded,  the  defective  and  the  perverted,  to 
keep  them  from  doing  harm,  but  a  prison  has  no  excuse  except  as 
the  fruit  of  hate  and  the  desire  to  inflict  torture.  And  civilized 
society  always  seeks  out  the  most  fiendish  ways  of  torture.  To  the 
well-educated  prisoner  it  denies  newspapers,  books  and  writing- 
materials,  allows  him  only  a  monthly  or  weekly  letter.  Such  things 
drive  the  dagger  deepest  into  the  sensitive  soul.  And  the  wife  of 
such  an  unfortunate  can  stand  at  the  prison-gate  and  beg  for  a  view 
of  her  beloved,  but  the  iron  gate  opens  not  and  the  wire  screen 
allows  no  loving  touch  from  mate  or  child.  Onei  of  old  hath  said, 
"What  God  hath  joined  together,  let  no  man  part  asunder,"  but  the 
first  thing  which  Christian  justice  does  is  to  part  a  loving  wife  from 
her  husband  and  decrees  that  her  children  shall  grow  up  orphans 
and  that  she  and  her  loved  ones  shall  fight  the  battle  with  poverty 
alone.  The  Turk  is  harsh  in  his  punishments,  but  it  is  easy  to 
bribe  the  Turkish  jailer,  a  little  greasing  of  the  palm  is  sufficient  to 
make  life  endurable  in  Mohammedan  prisons,  but  who  can  bribe 
Christian  justice  to  take  a  leaning  towards  mercy?  It  takes  its 
oath  upon  the  Bible  which  says,  "Judge  not,"  and  then  proceeds  to 
tear  the  human  soul  limb  from  limb  in  those  places  where  they 
allow  one  man  to  sit  in  judgment  upon  another,  which  they  proudly 
call  "Halls  of  Justice."  Once  upon  a  time  the  people  wrested  the 
right  of  trial  by  jury  from  their  rulers.  Twelve  men  of  their  own 
peers  were  to  stand  between  the  judge  and  the  accused,  but  modern 
juries  exist  only  to  listen  to  the  judge's  opinion  of  the  law  and  to 
O.  K.  his  dictum. 

XVI.    PROGRESSIVE  DEGENERATION 
From  Head-Hunter  to  Bayonet  Drill. 

The  White  Man's  civilization  is  a  progressive  degeneration  into 
deeper  and  deeper  brutality.  In  their  days  of  Barbarism,  the  natural 
animal  instincts  o*  man  still  somewhat  checked  his  brutality,  but 
these  checks  are  lost  in  the  white  man's  civilization.  Animals  have 
an  instinctive  respect  for  the  sacredness  of  life,  which  is  altogether 
absent  from  civilized  men.  Animals  protect  their  offspring  as  long 
as  they  can  and  shield  the  mother  and  her  young  from  danger  so 
far  as  is  in  their  power.  In  wild  nature  no  pregnant  mother  ever 
goes  hungry,  she  is,  in  addition,  nearly  always  immune  from  the 
attack  of  the  natural  enemies  of  the  species,  but  among  civilized 
races  millions  of  mothers  have  neither  sufficient  food  for  them- 
selves, nor  for  their  infants,  neither  is  their  labor  lightened  in 
cannery  or  department  store,  in  cotton-mill  or  clothing  factory. 
Modern  industrial  society  docks  the  wages  and  penalizes  its  wage- 
slaves  for  child-bearing,  for  weddings  and  for  funerals;  the  mills  of 
men  have  no  time  to  stop  that  the  purposes  of  God  may  be  accom- 
plished in  the  world. 


Humbug-Land  25 

Likewise,  modern  warfare  is  infinitely  more  brutal  in  design 
and  spirit  than  the  warfare  of  barbarians.  This  is  the  law  of  war 
among  the  ancients:  "And  it  shall  be  when  ye  draw  nigh  unto 
battle  ....  the  officers  shall  speak  unto  the  people,  saying,  What 
man  is  there  that  hath  built  a  new  house  and  hath  not  dedicated  it? 
let  him  go  and  return  to  his  house,  lest  he  die  in  battle,  and  another 
man  dedicate  it.  And  what  man  is  there  that  hath  planted  a  vine- 
yard, and  hath  not  used  the  fruit  thereof?  let  him  go  and  return 
unto  his  house,  lest  he  die  in  battle  and  another  man  use  the  fruit 
thereof.  And  what  man  is  there  that  hath  betrothed  a  wife,  and 
hath  not  taken  her?  let  him  go  and  return  unto  his  house,  lest  he 
die  in  the  battle,  and  another  man  take  her.  And  the  officers  shall 
further  speak  unto  the  people,  and  they  shall  say,  What  man  is 
there  that  is  fearful  and  fainthearted?  let  him  go  and  return  unto 
his  house."  (Deut.  20:2-8.)  The  primitive  tribe  knew  instinctively 
that  it  could  not  afford  to  jeopardize  its  choicest  youths  in  battle. 
It  sent  home  the  lover  to  his  sweetheart,  the  home-builder  to  his 
hearthstone,  it  sent  back  all  the  idealists  to  whom  the  slaughter  of 
the  trenches  was  repulsive,  it  spared  all  the  refined  and  sensitive 
souls,  who  shrunk  from  killing  and  left  in  the  army  only  the  super- 
fluous males,  those  of  murderous  and  bloodthirsty  instincts.  Thus 
the  ravages  of  war  cut  off  only  the  bloodthirsty  out  of  the  tribe  and 
left  the  nobler-minded  to  propagate  the  race.  But  civilized  peoples 
are  not  content  to  let  the  bloodthirsty  volunteer  for  combat,  they 
conscript  into  their  armies  all  the  peace-loving  and  better-minded 
youth  of  the  land,  they  tear  away  all  lovers  from  their  sweethearts, 
their  murder-trumpet  bids  the  young  home-builder  cease  his  work 
and  commands  the  young  husbandman  to  leave  his  plow,  to  join  in 
the  dance  of  death. 

So  also,  in  olden  times,  the  armies  in  the  field  often  let  their 
chief  braggadocios,  their  generals  and  kings,  decide  the  battle  in 
single  combat,  as  in  the  case  of  David  and  Goliath.  Likewise,  the 
ancient  king  was  required  to  lead  his  army  into  battle  in  person,  he 
must  himself  brave  the  greatest  danger,  or  no  soldier  would  fight 
for  him.  In  those  days  the  human  battle  was  still  something  like 
the  animal  fights,  a  contest  of  valor,  which  degenerated  into 
butchery  only  in  the  heat  of  passion.  Two  herds  of  cattle  will 
fight  when  they  meet,  chiefly  for  the  right  of  pasturage,  yet  they 
do  not  insist  on  mortal  combat,  but  man  never  thinks  war  worth 
while,  except  by  killing  his  fellow-man.  His  victory  tastes  bitter 
to  him  till  he  can  hear  his  brother's  death-rattle.  But  the  animal^ 
which  finds  that  he  has  killed  a  fellow-member  of  the  herd,  slinks 
away  conscience-striken  and  cannot  be  found  for  days,  ihc  oviiized 
battle  is  simply  an  orgy  of  machine  murder  ordered  by  cowards 
far  from  the  danger-line.  What  modern  general  ever  came  within 
twenty  miles  of  a  battle,  or  heard  a  bullet  whistle  or  had  a  horse 
shot  from  under  him?  Modern  kings  would  not  be  quite  so  ready 
to  send  their  millions  into  war,  were  they  themselves  to  face  cannon 
and  musket  and  bayonet. 

Some  civilized  peoples  pride  themselves  upon,  their  right  to 
vote,  but  none  of  them  possess  the  right  to  vote  whether  they  shall 
make  war  or  not,  even  in  democracies  that  is  a  right  reserved  ex- 
clusively for  their  rulers.  But  in  animal  society  no  beast  can  send 


26  Mendez  Pinto 

another  beast  into  battle.  Only  humans  are  subject  to  4his  death- 
duty  at  the  whims  of  their  autocrats,  but  animals  are  not  like  men, 
they  are  free. 

In  barbarous  times  the  right  to  asylum  was  universal.  The  slave 
could  flee  to  another  country  and  there  he  was  protected.  The  laws 
of  hospitality  required  the  host  to  protect  the  stranger  against  mob- 
violence  (Gen.  19:1-10)  and  the  law  of  old  Israel  was  "Thou  shalt 
not  deliver  unto  his  master  a  servant  that  is  escaped  from  his  master 
unto  thee:  he  shall  dwell  with  thee,  in  the  midst  of  thee,  in  the 
place  which  he  shall  choose  within  one  of  thy  gates,  where  it 
pleaseth  him  best;  thou  shalt  not  oppress  him"  (Deut  23:15,  16), 
but  the  modern  nations  deport  and  persecute  all  foreigners  living 
among  them,  there  is  nowhere  on  the  earth  a  place  of  asylum  for 
the  white  man  persecuted  by  the  autocrat  of  the  country  that  rules 
over  him.  The  American  government  will  deliver  up  every  subject 
of  the  British  king  who  has  fled  from  his  yoke.  Thus  do  all  the 
nations  with  those  who  seek  freedom. 

XVII.    PARASITISM 
Feasting  the  Drones. 

Not  only  is  the  whole  human  race  altogether  parasitic  in  nature 
both  upon  plants  and  animals,  but  there  is  endless  inter-racial  para- 
sitism, a  thing  totally  unknown  in  the  animal  world.  No  animal 
ever  enslaves  a  member  of  its  own  species.  Among  the  humans, 
the  rich  are  nothing  but  parasites  upon  the  labor  of  the  poor.  Great 
hordes  of  beaurocrats  fasten  themselves  upon  the  highly  developed 
social  structure.  All  these  office-holders  are  useless  to  a  real  self- 
functioning  social  order.  When  people  get  the  law-making  mania, 
they  must  pay  for  it  by  an  ever  increasing  crop  of  policemen,  judges, 
detectives,  clerks,  lawyers,  court-printers,  etc.,  for  every  new  statute 
to  enforce  it. 

But  one  of  the  worst  forms  of  parasitism  is  that  among  the 
poorer  people  the  old  universally  live  upon  their  children.  In  all 
well-developed  animal  societies  there  comes  a  time  when  the  old 
and  young  part  company.  Such  a  thing  as  the  young  supporting 
the  old  is  utterly  unknown  among  them.  An  animal  would  die  of 
shame  before  it  would  eat  the  bread  of  its  children.  After  caring 
for  their  offispring  the  proper  length  of  time,  they  absolutely  leave 
the  young  to  their  own  enjoyment  of  life  and  never  in  any  way 
hinder  or  interfere  with  them  or  allow  themselves  to  become  a 
burden.  But  in  human  society  there  is  scarce  a  home  among  the 
poor  which  does  not  harbor  an  old  discontented  woman  or  man, 
who  makes  life  miserable  for  the  younger  generation,  or  at  any 
rate  is  a  heavy  burden  to  support.  But  so  great  is  ancestor-worship 
among  the  humans  that  they  profess  it  a  great  privilege  to  have 
such  an  aged  decrepit  in  their  homes,  for  their  religion  is  that 
suffering  is  ennobling  to  the  soul  and  cross-bearing  a  great  privilege. 
Yet  human  misery  would  no  doubt  be  vastly  less  if  the  young 
would  let  the  old  shift  for  themselves,  as  nature  meant  that  they 
should,  for  the  promise  of  life  is  to  youth,  and  old  age  has  no  right 
to  rob  the  young  of  a  single  ounce  of  it. 


Humbug-Land  27 

XVIII.    MEN  AT  PLAY 
What  does  the  Mirror  Tell? 

One  of  the  queerest  spectacles  in  the  world  is  to  watch  civilized 
man  in  his  amusements.  Their  most  popular  entertainment  is  "jazz" 
or  vaudeville.  The  actors  on  the  stage  try  to  act  crazy,  pretend 
they  are  animals,  paint  their  faces  black,  or  parade  in  war-paint. 
Yet  if  one  goes  into  an  insane  asylum,  where  people  actually  are 
crazy,  one  looks  in  vain  to  see  them  do  the  crazy  things  that  are 
done  on  the  stage.  I  have  never  seen  a  cow  stand  on  her  head, 
but  one  can  see  multitudes  of  human  actors  try  to  stand  on  their 
heads  on  the  stage,  attempting  to  spill  out  their  brains.  To  crawl 
on  all  fours,  to  roll  on  their  belly,  to  hop  on  one  foot,  to  kick  the 
moon:  such  are  the  things  which  get  greatest  applause  in  the 
theatres  of  civilized  peoples.  Possibly  because  they  unconsciously 
behold  there  their  real  image :  a  dunce.  Animals  are  great  for  play 
and  they  delight  in  every  sort  of  mimicry,  but  it  is  only  man  that 
can  play  the  fool  and  applaud  himself  for  it. 

XIX.    DEBTS 
What  Moth  and  Rust  Cannot  Corrupt. 

Every  bird  has  his  twig,  the  fox  his  hole  and  the  myriad  insects 
have  each  their  velvet-home  in  fee-simple  and  tax-exempt  by  free 
endowment  of  Nature,  but  the  son  of  man  has  not  where  to  lay 
his  head,  for  the  king  and  the  landlord  have  stolen  his  birthright. 
Animals  have  no  debts,  neither  do  they  mortgage  their  winter- 
stores,  their  future  labor,  their  nest,  nor  their  lairs.  But  among  all 
the  self-mortifications  which  men  indulge,  they  hold  their  debts  pre- 
eminently sacred.  The  greatest  part  of  the  machinery  of  human 
government  is  taken  up  with  the  enforcement  of  debt-claims.  Any 
court  will  give  to  any  Shylock  his  pound  of  flesh,  though  if  the 
merchant's  or  banker's  speculations  turn  out  badly,  he  may  go  into 
bankruptcy  and  be  freed  of  all  future  obligation.  If  the  debtor 
be  a  poor  man,  however,  his  debts  will  be  a  lien  upon  his  wages 
forever. 

The  French  peasant  who  invested  his  money  in  the  Panama 
Canal  lost  it  and  the  Americans  reaped  the  benefit.  But  the  French 
banker  who  lent  money  to  the  Czar  of  Russia  to  maintain  his  rule 
of  the  knout  and  to  make  war,  can  call  upon  the  whole  Christian 
world  to  collect  these  debts  for  him  from  the  Russian  peasant. 
The  only  absolutely  safe  investment  on  earth  is  in  war-loans,  for 
nations  are  not  suffered  to  go  into  bankruptcy  and  what  the  parents 
cannot  pay  may  be  collected  from  the  children  and  their  children. 
England  is  still  paying  interest  on  the  Napoleonic  war-debts  and 
the  Americans  will  not  get  their  Liberty  out  of  bondage  for  many 
generations,  and  the  German  children  had  better  wait  to  be  born 
till  after  the  Reparations  have  been  paid. 

In  olden  times  the  people  delivered  a  tenth  part  of  their 
produce  to  the  church  as  tithes,  the  king  collected  seven  per  cent 
more  and  other  dignitaries  got  the  "little  thithes,"  etc.  In  modefn 
states  the  people  pay  seven  per  cent  to  the  stock-jobbers,  to  keep 
their  stocks  well  watered  and  they  pay  from  twenty  to  sixty  per 
cent  tribute  to  their  merchant-princes,  their  oil-kings  and  coal- 


28  Mendez  Pinto 

barons.  The  production  cost  of  their  articles  of  commerce  is  barely 
one-third  of  what  the  consumer  pays  for  them,  the  rest  goes  to 
middlemen.  Their  age  is  the  age  of  "business,"  the  greatest  tribute- 
paying  age  the  world  has  ever  seen. 

A  thrifty  young  man  among  them  invests  his  savings  in  a  home. 
But  he  must  repair  the  wear  of  the  building  and  finally,  when  it 
becomes  too  old,  replace  it  with  a  new  one.  In  the  course  of  time 
his  "capital"  has  disappeared  by  natural  disintegration  of  the  house. 
And  as  a  house  wears  out,  so  does  machinery,  and  all  of  real  capital 
is  thus  wiped  out  by  the  ravages  of  time.  But  time  can  never  wipe 
out  human  obligations,  at  least  not  in  Christian  lands.  The  other 
young  man  invested  his  savings  in  railroad  stock,  he  and  his  heirs 
and  assigns  can  draw  dividends  forever,  he  does  not  have  to  renew 
locomotives,  rails  or  roadbed.  He  was  wise;  he  did  not  lend  the 
railroad  actual  capital,  he  only  lent  the  sign  of  it,  viz.,  money,  and 
moth  and  rust  cannot  corrupt  money.  If  the  railroad  business  is 
not  good,  the  State  pays  him  interest,  even  though  his  stock  be 
heavily  water-logged.  If  railroading  is  good,  he  can  collect  "all  the 
traffic  will  bear."  For  all  their  public  utilities  men  pay  not  only 
the  cost  of  service  and  depreciation  of  plant,  but  they  must  pay  an 
annual  tribute  to  the  stockholders.  Though  the  pipes  of  the  water- 
system  have  long  ago  rusted  out  and  been  replaced  out  of  the 
pockets  of  the  consumers,  and  the  locomotives  been  replaced  by 
better  ones,  all  this  only  progressively  increases  the  obligation  of 
the  public  to  pay  more  interest  on  the  increased  valuations.  Modern 
civilization  thinks  there  is  nothing  equal  to  the  private  toll-railroads 
for  public  travel.  The  old  robber  baron  on  the  Rhine  could  not 
collect  a  tithe  of  the  tribute  from  the  shipping  of  that  river  which 
modern  society  so  proudly  pays  to  its  privately  owned  railroads  and 
coal  mines.  But  this  private  possession  of  the  earth  and  the  means 
of  livelihood  is  only  a  modern  invention  among  men.  Primitive 
society  held  all  land  and  all  the  natural  resources  in  common, 
precisely  as  do  all  animal  societies.  Among  the  un-christianized 
Hebrews  all  land-titles  came  automatically  to  an  end  in  the  year  of 
Jubilee,  which  was  every  fiftieth  year,  and  all  money-debts  ceased 
automatically  every  seventh  year. 

XX.    THE  INTELLECTUALS 

The  Hand,  the  Stomach  and  the  Tape-Worm. 
Standing  in  Line  for  a  Yoke. 

In  the  ancient  Greek  and  Roman  Empires,  as  a  rule  only  the 
slaves  could  read  and  write  and  were  educated,  for  knowledge  is 
not  power,  but  it  makes  a  better  work-horse  and  therefore  among 
the  civilized  nations  the  educated  classes  always  have  had  the  least 
power.  The  wage-slaves  often  combine  and  their  unions  some- 
times become  very  powerful,  but  in  an  age  of  universal  exploitation 
the  salary-slave  is  the  meekest  timber  there  is.  As  a  class  the  in- 
tellectuals use  their  knowledge  not  for  their  own  benefit,  neither 
for  that  of  the  public  good,  all  their  knowledge  is  used  exclusively 
in  the  interest  of  their  masters  and  according  to  the  dictates  of  the 
powers  that  rule.  It  is  true,  the  salary-slave  holds  the  wage-slave 
in  much  contempt,  as  the  church-mouse  looks  down  upon  its  brother 
in  the  field.  The  Intellectual  is  the  special  pet  of  the  ruling  in- 


Humbug-Land  29 

terests,  the  blood-hound  of  Legree  to  bite  the  Proletariat  He 
would  not  hurt  the  hand  that  feeds  him,  nor  unmask  the  robber 
to  the  robbed.  The  Intellectual  wears  better  clothes  than  the  artisan, 
but  the  artisan  takes  his  family  to  the  beach  Saturday  afternoons 
in  a  flivver,  when  the  Intellectual  follows  after  on  the  trolley-car. 
The  artisan  eats  ham  and  eggs  for  breakfast,  the  Intellectual  eats 
health-bran,  and,  much  sooner  than  the  artisan,  is  the  Intellectual 
compelled  to  live  off  his  children  or  his  relations.  Who  ever  heard 
of  a  high-school  teacher  earning  a  salary  equal  to  that  of  a  plumber 
or  brick-layer?  But  the  incongruity  is  not  so  much  in  their  rewards 
as  in  the  nature  of  the  relation  of  their  work.  The  bricklayer  and 
plumber  do  honorable  work,  they  create  thinsrs  useful  to  society 
and  they  take  their  orders  only  from  their  equals,  they  work  under 
a  boss  who  knows  something  of  the  trade,  but  the  teacher  in  a 
high  school  or  university  always  takes  his  orders  from  an  inferior. 
The  expert  in  history  must  teach,  not  the  result  of  careful  investiga- 
tion, but  such  fables  as  the  Loyalty  League  believes  in.  The  scientist 
must  not  arrive  at  Darwinian  conclusions  for  the  Board  of  Directors 
are  orthodox  Christians.  Then  there  is  the  host  of  public  school 
teachers,  they  are  subject  to  school  boards  consisting  of  the  lowest 
politicians  of  the  ward,  who  decide  the  amount  of  their  salary  in 
Hinky  Dink's  saloon.  One  would  think  that  those  who  give  their  toil 
would  have  the  sense  to  name  the  price  for  which  thev  will  sweat, 
but  even  the  professor  of  Economics  humbly  petitions  his  Board  of 
Venerable  lenoramusses  for  an  increase  in  salary.  The  merchant, 
though  he  toils  not.  neither  does  he  spin,  always  sets  his  own  price 
for  his  cloth  and  other  wares,  but  the  farmer,  the  laborer,  the  clerk, 
the  manager  and  the  teacher  stand  hat  in  hand  humbly  waiting  upon 
what  crumbs  their  masters  are  willing  to  dole  out. 

It  is  on  account  of  this  lack  of  inder>endence  and  assertion  of  the 
solidarity  of  their  class  that  the  lot  of  Intellectuals  in  all  civilized 
countries  is  so  despicable.  The  common  wage-worker  merely  gives 
his  muscle-power  for  his  wage.  If  he  likes  his  work,  he  may  take 
some  pleasure  in  doine  it  well.  But  the  Intellectual  is  hired  chiefly 
to  prevaricate  for  the  interests  of  his  exploiters.  As  sales  agent  he 
must  praise  the  shoddy  of  his  firm.  As  preacher  or  teacher  he  must 
sanctify  the  current  delusions  of  popular  belief.  As  a  lawyer  he 
must  keep  his  crooked  clients  out  of  jail.  As  reporter  and  news- 
writer,  or  editor,  he  must  color  and  camouflage  and  manufacture  the 
news  as  suits  the  particular  propaganda  of  the  government  or  the 
interests  of  the  money-power.  As  magazine  contributor  he  must 
sugar-coat  the  poison  of  the  chief  advertiser.  As  advertising  writer 
he  must  convince  the  public  that  vinegar  is  sweet.  In  modern  society, 
as  the  wage-worker  is  paid  to  sweat,  so  the  Intellectual  is  paid  to  lie, 
for  his  master.  The  Intellectuals  are  the  buttress  of  modern  capital- 
ism against  the  demands  of  the  wage-slave  for  better  conditions  in 
life.  They  must  forever  find  new  arguments  that  the  hand  must 
feed  the  stomach  of  the  social  organism,  but  they  must  never  men- 
tion the  tapeworm  therein.  The  chief  duty  of  the  press  and  the  pul- 
pit is  to  teach  the  poletariat  that  a  job  is  a  blessing  and  that  the 
work-giver  is  a  benefactor  to  mankind.  The  ass  is  stupid,  but  he 
knows  that  the  burden  on  his  back  is  not  his  blessing,  the  horse  does 
not  seek  a  rider,  and  the  ox  does  not  stand  in  line  to  beg  for  a 
yoke,  for  animals  are  not  fools  like  men.  They  who  have  heaven's 
lamp  should  have  shown  the  captives  the  way  out  of  their  prison. 


30  Mendes  Pinto 

but  only  He  of  Nazareth  "proclaimed  release  to  the  captives,  good 
tidings  to  the  poor,  and  healing  for  the  bruised,"  all  the  rest  have 
betrayed  the  hopes  of  the  poor.  They  have  shackled  the  cry  for  free- 
dom, they  have  used  their  knowledge  to  cheat  the  poor  out  of  the 
heritage  of  their  toil.  Indeed,  tyranny  and  oppression,  and  injus- 
tice, would  soon  come  to  an  end  among  mankind  if  the  Intellectuals 
did  not  fortify  it  with  their  knowledge  and  their  education.  How 
long  could  the  merchant-princes  carry  on  their  business,  the  financial 
magnates  succeed  in  their  schemes  of  plucking  the  public,  the  war- 
makers  put  over  their  propaganda,  if  they  could  not  hire  the  brains 
of  the  Intellectuals?  And  why  are  the  common  people  always  so 
helpless  whenever  they  attempt  to  run  a  store  or  factory  co-opera- 
tively, except  for  the  fact  that  the  Intellectuals  sabotage  the  enter- 
prises of  the  people? 

It  is  bad  to  eat  one's  bread  with  the  salt  of  tears,  it  is  worse  to 
eat  it  at  the  cost  of  the  decay  of  the  inner  man,  yet  such  is  the  lot 
of  the  Intellectual  in  civilized  society.  He  remains  silent  when  he 
knows  he  ought  to  speak.  The  horny-handed  son  of  toil  goes  home 
to  his  cottage  at  night,  weary  from  overwork,  but  with  a  good  con- 
science, for  his  work  at  least  hath  not  hurt  his  fellow-man,  but  the 
Intellectual  cannot  earn  his  salary  unless  he  keeps  back  part  of  the 
truth  from  his  unenlightened  brother,  he  must  lay  his  master's 
snares  to  catch  the  unwary,  he  must  poison  the  minds  of  children 
with  race  hatred  and  military  lust,  in  war-time  he  must  be  the 
atrocity-monger  of  the  nation.  That  mother  is  hard-hearted  who 
denies  her  children's  cry  for  bread,  but  what  of  him  that  denies  the 
people's  cry  for  truth,  and  all  that  suffering  humanity  did  ask  of  the 
Intellectuals  during  its  six  years  of  agony  (four  of  war  and  two  of 
peace),  was  "O  tell  us  only  what  you  know,"  but  they  all,  with  one 
consent,  were  silent. 

XXI.    THE  GOSPEL  OF  TOIL 
Canary-Song  vs.  the  Boiler  Factory. 

Not  only  is  the  Christian  civilization  a  great  plague  and  destruc- 
tion in  nature,  it  is  itself  becomfng  ever  more  ugly  and  deformed. 
Nature  cares  only  for  that  which  is  sleek  and  fat,  for  red  cheeks  and 
ruddy  lips.  Wherever  the  bloom  of  health  is  gone  she  sends  her 
scavengers,  the  bacteria,  to  disintegrate  the  corpse.  She  wants  no 
coughing  males,  no  narrow-hipped  or  flabby-breasted  females.  But 
no  creatures  have  ever  so  despised  well-being,  grace  and  comeliness 
of  body  as  the  toil-drunken  peoples  of  the  White  race.  There  are 
few  animals  which  do  not  spend  more  than  half  their  time  in  preen- 
ing their  feathers,  or  smoothing  their  fur.  Neglect  of  their  toilet 
always  is  a  certain  sign  of  disease  among  animals.  The  God  of 
Nature  was  an  artist  and  he  meant  that  his  world  should  be  exceed- 
ingly beautiful,  clean  and  healthy,  but  there  are  thousands  upon 
thousands  of  human  wives  who  have  never  seen  their  husbands  out 
of  their  working  clothes.  There  are  millions  of  husbands  who  never 
saw  their  wives  in  silk  stockings  or  dancing  frocks  and  party  gowns. 

The  cult  of  beauty  is  one  of  the  chief  ends  of  the  living  creation. 
Nature  loves  to  grow  flowers,  she  wants  every  woman  to  shine  as  the 
rose  and  every  man  to  be  handsome  as  a  god,  but  in  a  Chicago 
slaughter-house,  a  Pittsburg  steel- furnace,  a  Virginia  mine,  a  New 


Humbug-Land  31 

York  sweat-shop,  a  Philadelphia  department  store,  there  bloom  no 
flowers :  they  all  grind  human  flesh.  In  none  of  these  places  can  the 
human  organism  blossom  put  into  its  natural  grace  and  lithesome- 
ness.  Modern  civilization  in  its  factories  and  workshops  wallows  in 
unspeakable  grime  and  filth,  in  dirt  and  dust,  and  bedlam  din,  but 
nature  is  clean,  and  the  dandelion  seed  sails  in  zephyr  breeze,  and 
the  forest  air  is  pure  and  sweet,  wherein  dwell  nature's  children  and 
the  young  of  birds  and  animals  are  at  play,  while  the  young  of 
humans  pick  coal  at  the  tipple,  tend  cotton  spindles  or  sit  bent  over 
sewing  machines  or  breathe  second-hand  air,  dust  and  germs  in 
school  or  department  store.  But  nature  cares  naught  for  the  work 
of  man's  hands,  for  pyramids  and  sky-scrapers  and  tombstones: 
Adonis  and  Venus  are  her  gods  and  goddesses.  Youth,  beauty, 
laughter  and  play  are  her  ends.  When  any  creature  spends  more 
time  in  work  than  in  play,  its  race-life  is  near  its  end.  Toil  is  the 
suicide  of  the  race,  for  nature  is  not  willing  that  any  of  her  children 
should  be  condemned  into  work-beasts.  Therefore  all  the  peoples 
which  built  great  cities  by  the  toil  of  its  millions  of  slaves  have 
died  as  the  curse  of  this  toil.  Egypt  and  Babylon,  and  Assyria  and 
Greece  and  Rome  all  were  civilizations  built  upon  the  toil  of  slaves 
and  therefore  nature  has  utterly  wiped  them  out.  And  all  the  toil 
of  modern  millions  is  only  the  feverish  digging  of  its  grave  by  the 
white  race. 

The  black  race  has  never  been  afflicted  with  this  toil-drunken- 
ness, and  though  grievously  oppressed  by  the  white  race  since  the 
days  of  Pharaoh,  it  still  survives,  though  Pharaoh  is  dead  and  the 
desert  sands  blow  over  his  tomb.  The  great  CREATIVE  INSTINCT  in 
the  world  planned  the  earth  as  a  garden,  a  Paradise,  where  bride 
and  bridegroom  should  meet,  for  life,  as  the  prophet  of  God  hath 
said,  is  meant  to  be  an  "eternal  wedding-feast"  and  those  who  have 
no  time  for  feasting  are  unworthy  of  heaven's  gift.  The  ancient 
barbarians  still  remembered  something  of  the  laws  of  nature  from 
the  time  of  their  animal  ancestors.  They  wrote  into  one  of  their 
law-books  thus,  "When  a  man  taketh  a  new  wife,  he  shall  not  go 
out  in  the  host,  neither  shall  he  be  charged  with  any  business :  he 
shall  be  free  at  home  one  year,  and  shall  cheer  his  wife  whom  he 
hath  taken."  (Deut.  24:5.) 

When  Nature  endowed  the  animal  creation  with  freedom  of 
movement,  she  did  a  marvelous  thing:  every  motion,  every  exertion 
for  the  good  of  the  organism  she  fortified  with  pleasurable  sensa- 
tions, with  zest  and  delight  in  them,  she  made  the  way  to  well-being 
at  the  same  time  the  road  of  pleasure  and  delectation  of  life.  But, 
conversely,  every  act  harmful  to  the  organism's  existence  she 
coupled  with  pain,  with  lassitude,  with  repugnance,  with  tiredness 
and  lack  of  interest.  Nature  not  only  gave  food  to  the  animal 
world,  she  made  it  taste  good  in  addition,  and  even  the  search  for 
food  she  accompanied  with  pleasing  sensations,  as  also  she  added 
joy  to  nest-building,  to  selection  of  roosting-place  and  the  hunt  for 
shelter.  Only  that  is  good  in  nature  which  tastes  good,  feels  good, 
smells  good,  awakens  curiosity,  or  offers  any  other  satisfaction  to 
the  numberless  instincts  with  which  living  creatures  are  endowed. 

But  man  heeds  none  of  these  things.  His  conscience  lashes  him 
on  to  further  toil  when  he  is  tired  and  keeps  him  at  the  same  task 
when  he  would  rather  do  something  else.  He  feels  guilty  to  take 


32  Mendez  Pinto 

a  holiday  in  the  middle  of  the  week.  His  churches  appoint  fast- 
days  on  which  man  must  touch  nothing  that  does  him  good.  Man 
thinks  the  way  to  heaven  is  along  the  road  of  self-mortification. 
Nature  calls  no  evil  good,  calls  no  pain  a  blessing  and  endures  no 
other  hardships  than  those  which  she  cannot  circumvent. 

Man's  hands  have  been  endowed  with  a  wide  range  ot  creative 
capacity,  and  while  his  artistic  instinct  is  by  no  means  equal  to  that 
of  plants  or  birds,  he  is  pre-eminent  in  this  among  the  mammals. 
So  he  can  enjoy  much  that  many  other  creatures  must  go  without. 
Man  can  construct  many  things  pleasing  to  behold,  he  can  make 
miniatures  of  everything  around  him,  and  this  is  a  source  of  great 
satisfaction.  He  can  make  numberless  things  with  which  to  play, 
wagons  to  ride  on,  skates  to  whirl  on,  ladders  to  climb  up  with, 
ropes  to  swing  on,  boats  to  sail  in  and  so  forth.  Now  everything 
is  good  in  nature  which  widens  the  possibilities  of  play.  Travel  is 
good  if  the  goal  be  a  holiday  or  an  excursion,  but  travel  is  wicked 
if  the  goal  is  work,  or  the  accomplishing  of  some  unwelcome  task, 
for  nature  has  made  every  task  that  benefits  life  a  welcome  task,  a 
delight  of  exertion. 

And  if  the  white  man  would  perform  no  more  labor  save  such 
as  is  pleasing  to  him  while  engaged  in  it,  the  earth  could  endure 
him,  for  then  it  would  still  be  green.  The  river-banks  would  not 
be  hideous  with  the  offal  of  his  mines  and  factories,  the  landscape 
would  not  be  disfigured  with  sign-boards  and  he  would  not  plaster 
down  his  cement  where  grass  has  the  right  to  grow. 

One  of  the  few  endowments  of  man  which  is  not  evil  is  his 
creative  instinct,  for  the  exercise  of  this  faculty  is  ennobling,  but 
the  Christian  civilization  has  nearly  rooted  out  this  natural  endow- 
ment of  man.  With  what  eager  interest  does  the  uncontaminated 
boy  whittle  out  a  boat,  and  what  zest  there  is  in  trying  to  make  it 
float,  or  what  sacrifices  does  he  not  make  to  construct  a  toy  engine, 
or  cart,  or  a  pair  of  stilts,  but  modern  civilization  cuts  off  all  this 
natural  creative  activity  of  the  boy  and  sends  him  to  school,  where 
he  is  not  allowed  to  do  anything  according  to  his  bent,  but  where 
his  lessons  are  given  him  and  teachers  are  never  satisfied,  unless 
they  can  feel  that  their  lessons  are  a  real  task. 

The  boy  of  civilized  countries  is  greatly  handicapped  compared 
with  the  boy  among  savages,  who  does  not  have  to  go  to  school. 
The  savage  boy  learns  everything  that  his  elders  know  in  play  or  by 
natural  contact  with  them.  He  cuts  his  own  bow  and  fashions  his 
own  arrow  and  reaps  the  joy  of  making  these  things  and  acquiring 
skill  in  their  use,  but  the  civilized  boy  has  all  his  playthings  bought 
for  him.  The  savage  boy  learns  to  know  every  track  and  foot-print 
in  forest  and  jungle,  he  knows  the  nature,  the  habitat,  the  whole 
life-history  of  every  bird  and  insect  and  animal  about  him.  He 
reads  and  understands  the  quiver  of  every  leaf  and  the  flutter  of 
every  wing.  The  dawn,  the  sunset  and  the  sky  are  open  books  to 
him.  But  the  civilized  boy  has  to  consult  his  wrist-watch  to  find 
out  whether  the  sun  is  setting  or  rising,  he  cannot  tell  whether  the 
moon  is  old  or  young,  he  is  like  the  weather-bureau,  which  can  pre- 
dict a  rain-storm  or  a  clearing  only  on  the  day  after  it  has  happened. 

Then  when  he  is  through  school,  the  civilized  boy  enters  the 
factory  or  machine-shop,  or  he  becomes  a  juggler  of  figures  in  a 


Humbug-Land  •  33 

mercantile  establishment,  or  a  stacker  of  green  paper  in  a  bank: 
the  days  of  toy-boat  and  toy-housebuilding  are  over:  the  chance  for 
the  exercise  of  the  creative  instinct  has  come  to  an  end,  except  in 
spare  hours,  to  clutter  up  the  patent-office  with  useless  inventions. 

In  the  days  of  the  artisan  guilds  there  was  still  much  oppor- 
tunity for  the  exercise  of  the  creative  instinct.  The  artisan  had  the 
opportunity  to  make  more  than  one  kind  of  a  chair  or  table,  he 
could  experiment  to  some  extent  with  the  labor  of  his  hands  and 
accordingly  each  age  in  the  past  produced  its  distinctive  type  of 
architecture,  furniture  and  art.  But  modern  civilization  is  barren  of 
any  art  of  its  own,  it  has  not  created  a  single  distinctive  type  of 
furniture,  but  must  live  on  Queen  Anne,  or  Elizabeth.  And  as  the 
modern  architect  only  draws  blue-prints,  but  saws  no  board  with  his 
own  hands,  and  lays  no  mortar,  so  he  can  create  nothing  new:  for 
new  creations  arise  only  when  hand  and  brain  can  work  together. 
The  modern  architect  has  produced  nothing  that  can  equal  the 
ancient  Greek  or  Roman,  or  Moorish,  or  Gothic,  nor  even  that  of 
the  Chinese  or  Japanese  or  the  Mission  Fathers  of  California.  All 
he  can  do  is  to  juggle  the  old  styles  and  build  a  square  box  with 
filigree  like  a  skyscraper.  He  cannot  even  design  a  house  with  the 
charm  of  the  old  English  or  Saxon  cottage,  and  when  the  sands  of 
time  have  wept  away  the  Christian  civilization,  neither  Sphinx  nor 
Pyramid  nor  Coliseum  will  be  left  to  tell  the  tale,  nothing  but  mole- 
hills, slag-heaps  and  gopher-tunnels  in  the  mountains  to  give  testi- 
mony to  the  white  man's  progressive  degeneration. 

They  say  that  the  hog  wallows  in  mud,  but  in  all  nature  there 
is  nothing  so  grimy,  so  filthy,  so  dirty  as  the  civilized  nations.  All 
the  animals  always  wear  a  fine  clean  coat  of  hair  or  feathers,  they 
have  no  working-clothes:  they  wear  nothing  but  Sunday-suits,  but 
man  goes  dirty  to  work  and  comes  home  dirtier  still.  He  is  con- 
sumptive and  haggard,  and  bony  and  bent,  eats  his  cold  lunch  out 
of  a  dinner-pail  while  the  birds  have  a  jubilant  feast  of  the  crumbs. 
While  all  nature  is  frolicking  in  the  sun  and  jubilant  with  play  and 
laughter  and  song,  man  preaches  the  gospel  of  work,  and  ever  more 
work.  And  when  he  can  think  of  nothing  else  to  add  to  his  burden, 
he  changes  his  railroad  time  table  so  as  to  throw  the  habits  of  a 
whole  community  into  confusion,  or  he  re-routes  his  street-car  lines 
so  that  the  poor  cannot  find  their  way  to  work. 

However,  it  were  none  of  our  concern,  and  I  should  not  dis- 
course upon  these  things,  if,  in  plotting  toil,  men  only  plagued 
themselves,  but  because  in  their  sweat  and  their  sin  of  hard  labor 
they  also  plague  the  earth,  we  must  consider  their  deeds  in  our 
councils.  We  would  not  mind  their  wars,  if  only  their  own  tribe 
suffered,  their  corpses  make  good  food  for  worm  and  for  plant,  and 
their  lives  are  a  good  deal  more  worthless  in  nature  than  they 
imagine.  If  they  want  to  throw  their  lives  away,  the  world  shall 
be  no  poorer  for  it,  if  their  sin  stopped  there.  But  all  the  trees 
they  cut  down  and  shoot  to  pieces  in  war,  all  the  birds  they  drive 
from  their  homes  in  shrub  and  hedge,  all  the  flowers  they  destroy, 
all  the  innocent  horses  they  kill  and  wound:  these  are  the  things 
that  are  crying  to  heaven.  If  man's  sin  fell  only  upon  himself,  he 
would  receive  his  just  reward,  but  whenever  any  creature  fails  to 
fulfill  its  purpose  in  nature,  fails  to  respond  to  the  ends  for  which 
it  was  created,  the  rest  of  creation  always  bears  the  greater  penalty. 


34  ,  Mendez  Pinto 

And  though  nature  is  long-suffering  and  patient,  her  final  decree  of 
extinction  of  the  offending  race  is  unalterable.  Behold  that  work- 
drunken  boob  with  his  axe,  how  he  labors  and  nearly  loses  his 
breath  in  trying  to  drag  that  noble  tree  into  his  paper-mill?  His 
aching  back  and  stiff  joints  are  his  deserts,  but  the  tree  has  paid 
for  man's  sin  with  its  life  and  therefore  there  is  judgment  coming 
for  man  in  nature. 

So  at  the  conclusion  of  my  studies  I  walked  over  to  the  Great 
Assize  where  Nemesis  holds  court  in  order  to  see  how  the  Mighty 
Ones  of  the  earth  are  judged. 

XXII.    NEMESIS 
The  Police-Judge  and  the  Supreme  Court  of  Nature. 

This  court  is  not  like  the  courts  of  men  who  say  that  justice 
comes  by  maceration  of  the  soul,  for  Nature  is  like  unto  the  God 
of  the  Preacher  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  a  Father  that  wishes 
well  to  all  his  creatures,  even  men,  who  punishes  none  and  causes 
his  sun  to  shine  upon  the  good  and  the  evil,  who  pardons  the 
Prodigal  and  is  patient  with  the  Elder  statesmen.  In  nature  there 
is  no  retribution,  but  all  must  reap  that  which  they  sow,  but  no- 
where in  nature  comes  good  out  of  evil,  or  virtue  out  of  imprison- 
ment and  revenge.  Nature  blots  out  that  which  is  unfit  and  con- 
signs to  oblivion  the  race  that  disregards  the  brotherhood  of  all 
things  that  are  alive,  and  he  that  wantonly  plucks  a  flower  or  fells 
a  tree  before  its  promise  is  fulfilled,  is  guilty  of  murder. 

As  I  entered  the  great  halls  where  the  destiny  of  races  and 
species  are  fixed,  I  beheld  Mother  Nature  bleeding  from  the  wounds 
which  the  Christian  civilization  had  inflicted  upon  her,  and  upon 
her  bosom  there  lay  the  Goddess  of  Liberty,  whose  eyes  the  Chris- 
tian Judges  had  gouged  out.  It  was  a  sight  from  which  I  shrank, 
but  it  is  the  duty  of  the  scientist  even  to  search  into  the  mysteries 
of  putrefaction,  yet  the  stench  of  Christian  hypocrisy  is  well  nigh 
unbearable.  In  the  name  of  him  who  commanded  them  to  "love 
their  enemies,"  they  preach  a  holy  crusade  of  bloodshed.  In  the 
name  of  him  who  preached  "release  to  captives,"  they  throw  into 
prison  those  who  refuse  to  go  with  them  to  the  killing,  and  in  the 
name  of  "Liberty"  they  hand-cuff  those  who  hold  dear  the  weal  of 
mankind  and  bow  not  to  the  worship  of  the  War-Ogre. 

First  I  saw  a  great  multitude  brought  in,  who  were  stained 
with  blood  all  over,  for  ,they  had  thrust  their  bayonets  into  the 
bodies  of  their  brothers  who  had  done  them  no  harm  and  whom 
they  had  never  seen  before,  but  they  had  followed  the  mob  to  do 
evil,  or  had  been  conscripted  by  the  insane  stampede,  to  provoke 
death  for  the  glory  of  their  commanders.  But  though  their  hands 
were  red  with  murder,  they  were  forgiven  as  sheep  that  had  been 
led  astray  by  their  shepherds. 

But  next  came  those  that  on  earth  were  clothed  in  gold  and 
purple,  much  fewer  in  number,  whose  hands  were  not  hardened  in 
toil,  nor  their  bodies  bent  by  labor,  but  their  hearts  were  hard, 
their  souls  shriveled  and  their  springs  of  compassion  dried  up,  these 
stood  naked  in  the  deformity  and  ugliness  of  their  inner  self  before 
the  awful  Court  of  Nature.  Great  Rameses,  king  of  Egypt  and 
Assyria,  was  there.  He  had  sent  his  armies  to  battle  while  he  lay 


Humbug-Land  35 

e  lap  of  courtesans.  He  had  cut  off  the  breasts  of  the  virgins 
his  minions  had  made  captive.  Beside  him  stood  the  merchant- 
princes,  lords  of  ten-thousand  wage-slaves,  whose  wages  they  had 
kept  so  low,  they  could  buy  no  silk  for  a  wedding-dress,  nor  food 
enough  to  bloom  in  youthful  health,  nor  left  them  time  for  leisure 
to  dance  with  their  lovers.  He  who  darkens  woman's  wedding-day, 
robs  Nature  of  her  Holy  of  Holies.  Nature  forgives  all  that  is  for- 
given by  woman's  love,  but  he  who  robs  a  virgin  of  the  bloom  of 
her  cheeks,  whether  by  rape  or  by  hard  work,  hath  never  forgive- 
ness anywhere. 

Also  I  saw  the  judges  judged,  who  had  sent  their  fellow-men 
to  the  dungeons  and  the  gallows,  and  with  them  stood  the  detec- 
tives and  the  stool-pigeons.  And  Judas  was  there,  who  betrayed 
the  Christ  and  he  that  betrayed  the  hopes  of  the  world. 

Lastly,  I  beheld  a  great  company  in  robes  of  penitence  and 
ashes  on  their  head.  They  had  asked  one  Jesus  of  Nazareth  to 
make  intercession  for  them.  They  had  been  the  favored  ones  of 
the  race,  for  to  them  had  been  given  the  gift  of  knowledge  that 
they  might  be  the  light  of  the  earth,  but  out  of  fear  and  cowardice 
they  had  hid  their  light.  And  when  the  multitude  became  drunk 
with  madness  to  crush  Liberty,  they  gave  not  their  bodies  to  stand 
in  the  breach  to  save  the  nation,  for  the  stuff  of  martyrs  was  not 
within  them. 

XXIII.    THE  ECONOMY  OF  MORTAL  LIFE 

Immortals  that  Seek  to  Become  Mortal. 

I  have  so  far  given  a  faithful  report  of  man's  shortcoming  in 
nature,  but  each  creature  also  has  its  excellencies  and  in  conclusion 
I  will  mention  some  that  attach  to  the  human  race.  Indeed,  man's 
shortcomings  are  altogether  due  to  his  own  stupidity  and  not  to 
any  lack  of  natural  endowment.  Creative  Nature  ever  tries  some- 
thing new  and  only  time  can  tell  whether  her  experiments  prove 
successful  or  not,  and  though  it  is  very  doubtful  that  man  will 
prove  worthy  to  live,  nevertheless,  the  human  physical  organism  has 
many  advantages  not  possessed  by  other  animals. 

The  human  body  is  especially  constructed  for  a  great  wealth  of 
pleasurable  sensations.  There  is  a  far  larger  variety  of  foods  which 
taste  good  to  man,  than  is  possible  to  any  other  creature.  Also,  his 
ear  is  well-developed  and  can  send  his  whole  being  into  a  quiver 
of  musical  ecstacy  unknown  even  to  the  birds.  Of  all  animals,  man 
alone  seems  to  possess  the  capacity  to  dance  to  music,  and  when 
this  is  combined  with  youthful  sex-attraction,  man  is  enabled  to 
drink  heaven's  strongest  wine  from  lily-chalices. 

Likewise,  the  human  eye  is  fairly  responsive  to  harmonies  of 
color  and  grace  of  form,  and  so  coupled  with  his  creative  capacity, 
he  can  enjoy  the  artistic  satisfaction. 

But  the  chief  purpose  of  human  life  lies  in  its  unprecedented 
capacity  for  the  enjoyment  of  sex-attractions.  His  whole  body  and 
emotional  nature  are  constructed  with  this  end  in  view.  Man  can 
love  more  intoxicatingly  than  any  other  creature  and  his  chief  duty 
in  life  is  to  court  woman,  while  woman's  chief  duty  is  to  tempt  or 
charm  man. 


36  Mendez  Pinto 

The  greatest  achievement  of  the  Universal  Mind  is  the  evolu- 
tion of  mortal  life.  We  Immortals  have  the  everlasting  life,  but 
things  that  never  end,  become  monotonous,  and  unless  some  suns  or 
stars  collide  and  explode  in  the  universe,  or  some  other  catastrophe 
happens,  the  eternal  music  of  our  existence  runs  to  the  same  tune. 
It  is  therefore  a  wonderful  achievement  for  Evolution  to  have  in- 
vented mortal  life  with  its  endless  varieties.  It  is  mortality  alone 
which  makes  possible  youth  and  the  ecstacy  of  procreation.  It  is 
upon  the  earth  alone  where  Life  is  enabled  continually  to  re- 
experience  the  thrills  of  youth  and  of  the  nuptial  rapture,  by  its 
invention  of  death,  for  if  the  old  did  not  die,  soon  there  would  be 
no  room  for  the  young  to  be  born  and  live.  Similarly,  the  number 
of  individuals  which  may  experience  the  sensation  of  youth  and 
hope  is  greatly  increased  by  the  device  of  allowing  one  species  of 
life  to  exist  upon  the  ruins  of  another.  Thus  the  whole  animal 
world  subsists  upon  the  ruins  of  the  plant-world,  and  the  more  are 
eaten  after  they  have  bloomed,  the  more  room  for  others  to  bloom. 
For  all  life  is  good  while  it  lasts,  at  least}  to  animal  and  plant,  and 
man  need  not  curse  himself  with  labor  that  is  irksome  any  more 
than  the  rest  of  creation.  It  is  therefore  the  most  wonderful  proof 
of  the  unrivalled  wisdom  of  the  Creative  Intelligence,  not  only  to 
remove  the  old  by  death,  but  in  countless  instances  to  make  the  old 
generation  serve  as  the  supporter  of  the  youth  of  another  species, 
for  youth  is  the  final  goal  of  life,  and  so  marvelously  balanced  is 
life  in  nature  that  both  the  eater  and  the  eaten  obtain  an  equal 
share  of  life's  delight.  To  grow  up,  to  climb  through  infancy  to 
adolescence,  to  unfold,  to  mature,  to  procreate:  this  is  to  quaff  the 
cup  of  existence  of  a  million  immortal  years  in  a  single  hour,  for 
life  is  measured,  not  by  years  or  eons,  but  by  thrills  and  hopes,  by 
fear  and  dread,  by  vision  and  victory,  and  so  nature  has  endowed 
the  human  being  with  a  cluster  of  raptures  out  of  reach  of  most 
other  creatures.  He  may  dance  and  kiss  and  flirt  with  his  mate  in 
a  thousand  ways  unknown  to  dove  and  orchid,  and  through  his  eye 
he  may  see  the  world,  not  naked  and  gray  as  it  is  in  reality,  but  in 
the  glory  of  the  rainbow,  for  not  cold  facts,  but  color  and  illusion, 
are  the  beautiful  garments  of  truth.  Over  all  that  he  sees  and 
hears  and  feels,  over  all  the  data  of  his  experience,  man  may  let 
play  the  varying  lights  of  poetic  imagination,  as  a  skillful  stage- 
manager  drapes  his  dancers  successively  in  all  the  hues  of  the 
spectrum. 

And  if  by  chance  man  fall  into  undeserved  misery  and  finds  his 
hope  of  further  real  living  absolutely  closed,  he  has  been  given  the 
means  to  commit  suicide  in  less  painful  ways  than  is  vouchsafed  to 
the  animals. 

It  is  true,  every  nook  and  cranny  of  the  whole  universe  is 
peopled  with  life,  and  there  is  no  end  to  its  form  and  no  limit  to 
its  days,  but  not  anywhere  in  the  heavens  is  there  found  a  paradise 
equal  to  that  little  earth  which  spins  around  the  sun.  All  our  ad- 
venturous youths  are  hoping  for  an  incarnation  into  plant,  flower 
tree  or  shrub  or  even  into  an  animal,  and  no  doubt  we  would  a* 
ardently  long  for  the  adventure  of  human  life,  could  we  be  bu. 
assured  that  we  need  not  have  to  have  man's  brain,  his  conscience 
and  his  slavish  mind. 

Haec  dicit  amicus  humani  generis. 


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